Anna Lee even copied the way she wore her hair piled high up on her head. The hairdo, Dorothy suggested, might be a little mature for a girl who still wore bobby socks and penny loafers but Anna Lee thought it was the last word in sophistication. The only concern Dorothy ever had about Anna Lee was that she might be getting a little spoiled. In every school there is always one girl that all the boys are crazy about and from first grade on Anna Lee had been that girl.
The only male who seemed to be oblivious to her charms was Bobby, who could not wait to torment her every chance he got. And she in turn could not wait to run and tattle on him for every little thing he did and because she was older everybody always believed her side of the story. Consequently, Bobby was not at all happy about the fact that Anna Lee had arrived on earth six years before he had. A fact that she never let him forget. He hated it when the family sat around and told stories about things that had happened before he was born. He would ask over and over, “But where was I?” His mother would answer, “You weren’t here yet,” at which point his sister would always sigh and say, “Those were the good old days. I was still an only child,” or something equally obnoxious. Not only did it irritate him that he had not arrived sooner; it completely baffled him.
No matter how hard he tried, Bobby could just not seem to comprehend the world without him. Where had he been? What had he been doing? One afternoon, confined to the house because Luther Griggs was floating around the neighborhood waiting to beat him up again, he took the opportunity to follow his mother around the kitchen, asking her the same old questions.
“But if I wasn’t here, where was I?”
“You weren’t born yet,” she said, slicing potatoes.
“But where was I
before
I was born?”
“You were just a twinkle in your daddy’s eye, as they say. Could you hand me the butter?”
“When I was born was I already me or did I just come here and then I was me?”
“You were always you.”
He handed her the butter plate. “Would I still have been me if I had been born in China—or would I be a Chinaman?”
“Oh, Bobby, I wish you wouldn’t ask me all these silly questions. All I know is that you are a part of Daddy and me and you are who you’re supposed to be.”
“Yeah, but what if you hadn’t married Daddy, then what would have happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said as she greased a glass casserole dish with the stick of butter. “I can only tell you that you were born at the exact time and place you were supposed to be, and besides I wished for you.”
“You did?” said a surprised Bobby. “Like on a wishbone or something?”
“Something like that.”
“What did you say when you wished?”
“I said, I want a little boy with brown eyes and brown hair that looked just like you, and here you are. So, you see, you’re a wish come true. What do you think about that?”
“Wow.” Bobby stood there for a minute thinking it over. Then he said, “How do you know you didn’t get the wrong boy?”
“Because don’t forget, there is somebody up there that knows better than you and I.”
Dorothy went over and turned the oven on and pulled the cheese out of the icebox as Bobby trailed behind her. “Yeah, but what if He got mixed up and made a mistake? What if I was born in the wrong year or the wrong country even . . . ?”
“He doesn’t make mistakes.”
“But what if He did?”
“He doesn’t.”
“Yeah, but suppose He
did
, then what would happen?”
Dorothy placed the casserole dish in the oven. She stood at the sink to wash her hands with Bobby right behind her, waiting. After she dried her hands she turned around and looked at him. “Well, Bobby, is there somewhere else you would rather be than here with us?”
Bobby immediately said, “No . . . I was just wondering, that’s all,” and tried to look as innocent as possible, pretending to suddenly remember that he had to water his daddy’s bed of fishing worms in the backyard.
He had not been entirely truthful with his mother. Sometimes at night he would secretly fantasize that one day someone would knock on their door and say, “We are here for the boy.” Then his parents would come and get him and tell him who he
really
was. He was really the rightful prince of England and they had just been keeping him until he was twelve. Then he would ride through the streets of cheering people and as he passed by they would bow and whisper, “It’s the young prince.” All his teachers at school would curtsy and bow. As he went by his house his parents and grandmother would all be gathered together on the front porch and would bow, too. He would quickly motion for them to stand up and Anna Lee would run to the carriage and grovel at his feet in tears. “I’m sorry for everything I ever did to you, Your Majesty. I didn’t know who you really were. Forgive me, forgive me.” “You are . . . forgiven,” he would say with a sweep of his hand. He would be a gracious, forgiving ruler for all the people except for Luther Griggs. He would have him arrested and dragged through the streets in chains, crying and begging for mercy but to no avail. Ah, the pure joy of it all.
Then there were other times when he daydreamed he was really the son of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans who had been kidnapped at birth but found at last. There would be another parade down Main Street, only this time he would be riding on the back of Trigger with Roy tipping his big cowboy hat to all as they rode by. Dale and Gabby Hayes would be riding beside them smiling and waving to the cheering crowds. He would go to live with Roy and Dale on the Double R Bar Ranch and bring his Elmwood Springs family with him. His days would be spent riding the range for bad guys, nights sitting around the campfire listening to the Sons of the Pioneers sing cowboy songs, and they would all live happily ever after.
“Happy trails to you . . . until we meet again.”
But for the time being, at least, he was just plain Bobby Smith. And unfortunately for Anna Lee, he was, as she always suspected, up to something.
Bobby knew of only one sure way to get even with his sister for telling his mother he had been out at Blue Springs, a betrayal that had caused him to get grounded and miss seeing
Pals of the Saddle
and
Wild Horse Roundup
the following Saturday. He and Monroe had been plotting and planning for weeks. “It” was to happen the night of the prom.
His mother and Grandmother Smith were chaperones and Doc always kept the drugstore open late on prom night so the kids could come in afterward and eat ice cream. Jimmy would be off playing Friday night poker with his buddies at the VFW. Bobby and Monroe had the house entirely to themselves, so they could put their plan in action without anyone seeing them.
After the deed was done they went back to Bobby’s room and waited. Anna Lee was the last one home and floated in on a pink cloud at around 12:29, only one minute away from her 12:30 curfew, still glowing from her romantic evening. She had danced all night under silver paper stars and blue and white crepe-paper banners that hung from the ceiling of the gymnasium with her date Billy Nobblitt, a Van Johnson look-alike, or so she thought. She dreamily undressed, still hearing the strains of “It Had to Be You” and “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” playing over and over in her head.
When she had put on her nightgown and brushed her teeth, she carefully placed her gardenia corsage in a glass of water and put it on her dresser. She crawled into bed tired and happy, a feeling of bliss that lasted about one second.
She immediately shot out of bed screaming, “Snakes, snakes,” over and over at the top of her lungs. She ran to her parents’ room, threw their door open, and screamed, “Help . . . I’ve been snakebit!” and fainted dead away in a heap.
After Doc and Dorothy had tended to Anna Lee and had gotten her revived and somewhat calmed down, and after Mother Smith, out in the hall in her hair net and clutching her robe, had announced, “If there are reptiles in the house, I’m not staying,” peace reigned briefly. Mother Smith would not go back to bed until Doc went over to Anna Lee’s room to check. But it was no nightmare. Anna Lee’s bed was crawling with about a hundred slimy, squirming red worms straight from his own worm bed in the backyard. He’d guessed correctly.
“I don’t know why she has to make such a big deal out of it. They’re just harmless little worms,” said Bobby as he was being pulled out from under the bed by his father. And to make matters worse, the minute Doc had opened the door, Monroe, his true-blue blood brother, had jumped out the window and run all the way home in his Hopalong Cassidy pajamas, leaving Bobby to face the music alone.
Anna Lee was furious at Bobby and said that as far as she was concerned, he did not exist anymore. She made it a point to ignore him. She did not speak to Bobby for quite a while, until one day she forgot she wasn’t speaking to him and asked him to bring her some milk from the kitchen.
He reacted by laughing and pointing at her, saying, “Ha, ha, I thought you weren’t speaking to me. Go get it yourself,” and ran off the porch and down the street. A disgusted Anna Lee got up and went to the kitchen and opened the icebox and asked her mother, “What I don’t understand is why you had to have another child. Why didn’t you just stop with me?” Dorothy smiled. “Well, honey, we thought we had.” Anna Lee turned and looked at her mother in surprise; this was the first she had heard of this. “What happened?”
“I guess the Good Lord just decided to send us another little angel down from heaven.”
“I may be sick,” said Anna Lee and left the room.
Mother Smith came in. “What’s the matter with her?”
Dorothy laughed. “She wanted to know why we had to have Bobby.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I blamed it all on the Good Lord.”
“Well, that’s as good an excuse as any. According to the Presbyterians, everything in life is preordained, or at least that’s what Norma’s mother says.”
“Ida? How would she know, she’s a Methodist.”
“Not anymore. As of last week she claims she’s a Presbyterian.”
“What?”
“Oh yes . . . right in the middle of the bridge tournament she announced it.”
Dorothy, amazed, cracked three eggs in a tan bowl with a blue stripe and stirred. “But there’s not a Presbyterian church within a hundred miles around here. Why would she want to be a Presbyterian all of a sudden?”
Mother Smith poured herself a glass of iced tea. “I suppose it’s all part of her plan to move up in the world.”
Dorothy was baffled. “Well . . . I just don’t know what to say. . . . There’s a lemon in the icebox. I just hope she’ll be happy.”
Mother Smith reached into the icebox. “I do, too, but I don’t think anything can make her really happy unless, of course, Norma marries a Rockafella and she can at last take her rightful place in society.”
High Society
W
HAT
M
OTHER
S
MITH
said was true. If there was such a thing as high society in Elmwood Springs, Norma’s mother aspired to be it. After all, Ida Jenkins’s husband, Herbert, was the town banker and as such Ida felt she had a certain position to uphold and it was her civic duty to set the standards of genteel behavior. To light the way. Set an example. She was in charge of all the refinements of life and in her relentless pursuit to bring culture and beauty to the community she nearly drove Norma and her father crazy.
Even though she was living in a small town in the middle of nowhere, she subscribed to all the latest women’s magazines to keep abreast of the times. In the late thirties she took to spelling the word
modern
“moderne” and referring to their house as a “bungalow,” her clothes as “frocks.” She used the word “intriguing” as much as possible, had her hair styled just like Ina Claire, the Broadway star, and she never cried when she could weep or have “wept.”
Too, Ida was a club woman from tip to top. She was the grande dame of the National Federated Women’s Club of Missouri and had spearheaded the local Garden Club, Bridge Club, the Wednesday Night Supper Club, the Book Club, and the Downtown Theatrical Club and was never seen on the street without a hat and white gloves. She never served a meal in her home without having an individual nut cup at each place setting and a clean white tablecloth. “Only heathens eat off a plain table,” she said.
On Norma’s sixteenth birthday she had given her a copy of the new and enlarged edition of Emily Post’s book on etiquette, in which she had inscribed:
If everyone would read this we would certainly be spared a lot of unpleasantness in this world.
Happy Birthday
Love,
Mother
Ida was even on a first-name basis with the author and often wondered out loud, “I wonder how Emily would handle this?” Or she would sometimes preface her remarks with, “Emily says . . .” Ida’s life goal and, she assumed, all of America’s was to bring enlightenment not only to Elmwood Springs but to the entire world until even in the farthest igloo at the North Pole and the wilds of the deepest darkest jungles in Borneo people everywhere would know that the fork belongs on the left and that fresh flowers on a table supply a delightful treat for the eye, that a clean house is a happy house, and come to embrace the fact that raising one’s voice in anger is rude and uncalled for on any occasion.
Ida always said, “Remember, Norma, in America a person of quality and class is not judged by aristocracy of birth but by his or her behavior.” Norma figured that by that standard her mother must have thought she was the duchess of Kent by now.
Norma loved her mother but, as Norma said to Anna Lee, “You try living with her twenty-four hours a day. You just don’t know how lucky you are to have your mother and not mine.” In fact, Norma spent the night at Anna Lee’s as often as possible, as did Monroe. The house was always full of people and fun things to do and the food was delicious. And most important, over at Neighbor Dorothy’s house you could actually sit on the living room furniture, something Ida never let Norma or her father do. In Ida’s house the living room was only shown to people as they passed by and was called the formal room. It was so formal that nobody had been in it since she had decorated it eighteen years before.