Stacey's Choice

Dad took my elbow. “Time to sit down,” he said.

  “Which table is ours?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you.” Dad led me through the fifteen or so small round tables to a long banquet table where a podium was set up. “We’re at the head table,” he said, “with Mr. Davis and Mrs. Barnes and the other executives.”

  “Whoa,” was the only word I managed to utter.

  We slid along between the banquet table and the wall, reading the placecards, until we reached the podium. Dad’s place was next to the podium; mine was next to his. We sat down. I felt breathless. Stoneybrook seemed a million miles away.

  * * *

  Here is what we did at the dinner that evening: ate and listened to speeches.

  The dinner itself was very fancy. Lots of courses. First came a beautiful … well, I’m not sure what you would call two jumbo shrimps on a piece of lettuce. An hors d’oeuvre, maybe? Then came a tiny bowl of consommé.

  Then came a speech. Mrs. Barnes gave a sort of pep talk to the company.

  After that, someone who seemed to be a good friend of my father presented a slide show. It was about Dad and his years with the company. A lot of the pictures made the dinner guests hoot and clap and laugh. I was even in one picture. The photo showed Dad sitting at his desk at work, holding me on his lap. I was, like, five years old, and wearing a truly hideous dress, falling-down socks, and ratty sneakers. But the laughter that followed was friendly, so I didn’t mind too much.

  When the slide show was over, the waiters served sherbet. I couldn’t eat mine, of course, but I was still curious about it. “Why are they serving dessert?” I asked Dad. “They haven’t served dinner yet.” Or had they? Maybe those two shrimps were dinner.

  “This is to clear your palate,” Dad whispered. “Dinner is next.”

  Whew. While everyone else was eating the sherbet, I excused myself and went to the lobby. I had noticed a bank of pay phones there, and I wanted to call Mom and check on her.

  Mrs. Braddock answered the call and said Mom was fine but that she was sleeping. I returned to the dinner.

  I reached my place just in time to be served a plate of roast beef and vegetables — and to hear another speech.

  Then came the salad course. After dinner? Oh, well. I decided I had been away from New York too long. I was losing my grip on sophistication.

  I ate the salad, called Mom again (she was still fine and still asleep), and this time returned just as coffee was being poured and dessert was being served. Dessert was white chocolate mousse, but guess what the waiter brought me: a goblet of fresh fruit, topped with a strawberry.

  Then came another speech. This one was made by … my father. He didn’t seem at all nervous as he adjusted the microphone, or as he talked about how important the company was to him. He spoke for nearly ten minutes. The very last thing he said was, “I am especially honored that tonight my daughter Stacey could be here to share in this event. Thank you all very much. And thank you, Stacey.”

  Dad started to sit down then, but Mr. Davis stopped him. He joined my father at the podium and said, “Not so fast,” which made everyone hoot and laugh again. Mrs. Barnes stood up, too, and together she and Mr. Davis presented Dad with a plaque, thanked him for his years of service, and congratulated him on his new position.

  That was the end of the speeches. Also the food. I checked the time. Ten o’clock! Oh, my lord. I wanted to catch the six-thirty A.M. train. Luckily, people were starting to get up then. “Okay, Dad, we better leave, too,” I said.

  “Now? Before we have a chance to dance?”

  The people who had stood up were now moving around the square of bare floor. (So that’s what it was for.)

  “I have to get up at four-thirty tomorrow morning,” I informed Dad.

  “You’re kidding.”

  I shook my head.

  Reluctantly, Dad left his party.

  I am not at my best early in the morning. I am particularly not at my best at four-thirty in the morning.

  Neither is my father.

  Guess what time we had gone to bed the night before. Midnight. We were running on a measly four and a half hours of sleep.

  See, Dad couldn’t just walk away from his dinner. He (and I) had to say good night to Mr. Davis and Mrs. Barnes and about fifteen other people. Then, as we walked through the ballroom to those double doors, people kept stopping Dad to talk to him. So between that and a ride with New York’s slowest cab driver, we didn’t turn out the lights in the apartment until 11:54.

  When the alarm rang at four-thirty, I truly could not believe it. “Didn’t I just go to bed?” I mumbled into the darkness.

  I stumbled to the bathroom and washed my face in an attempt to wake up, but I hadn’t bothered to turn on a light, so the water didn’t do me much good.

  “Dad?” I called. I knocked on his door, then returned to my room, sat on my bed, and rubbed my eyes. At last I dared to turn on a light.

  “Oh, spare me,” I moaned, squinting into the brightness.

  Finally I dredged up enough energy to take a shower. When I finished, Dad took one. I got dressed (in yesterday’s school clothes) and started Mr. Coffee for Dad.

  “Do we have anything for breakfast?” I called from the kitchen.

  “Bagels,” Dad replied. “In the bread drawer.”

  Oh, goody. Real New York bagels. I set them on the table along with cream cheese and orange juice.

  Soon my father stumbled out of his room and directly to Mr. Coffee. He poured himself a cup, and then we sat silently at the table.

  Dad blinked, trying to focus his eyes. After a moment he said, “What happened last night, Stacey?”

  I swallowed a large mouthful of bagel. “Huh?”

  “All of a sudden you wanted to leave.”

  “I was hoping to get to bed early. I was trying to prevent us from feeling exactly the way we feel now.”

  “I had no idea you would intend to get up at four-thirty in the morning.”

  “I told you I wanted to take an early train.”

  “I know, but I didn’t realize that would involve walking out before the dinner was over.”

  “If that bothered you, how come you didn’t say so last night?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil the evening. But I swan, Stacey.” (He swanned?) “You kept getting up and leaving the room during the ceremony, and then for us to be the very first people to leave, well …”

  “Look,” I said, bristling, “at least I came, didn’t I? I was trying to do what I thought was best. I was trying to be there for you and Mom.”

  Dad just nodded his head.

  * * *

  We barely said two words to each other between then and the time Dad escorted me to my train at Grand Central. At ten after six, when we entered the station through the row of swinging doors off of Vanderbilt, Grand Central was a busy place, but a quietly busy place compared to the bustle of commotion which it would become in a couple of hours. A few stores had opened — mostly donut and coffee stands — and the newsstand was in full swing. Short lines of people stood at the ticket windows, waiting drowsily. Along one wall, about twelve men were sleeping. They huddled in cardboard boxes or in piles of rags, clutching their possessions, even while they slept.

  Dad saw me looking at them. “Sometimes now they kick them out of the station at night,” he said. “They tell them they have to sleep somewhere else.”

  Those were the first complete sentences Dad had uttered since breakfast. He was trying to make up with me. He and Mom used to have this rule that they couldn’t go to bed mad at each other. If they were angry they would have to talk out their problem before they could go to sleep. (I guess this policy hadn’t worked too well.) Anyway, I knew that now Dad didn’t want me to leave for Stoneybrook while we were angry. I didn’t want to do that, either.

  So I said, “They kick out the homeless? But then where do they go?”

  Dad shrugged. “The streets. Doorways. Subways. But sometimes they get kicked
out of the subways, too.”

  “Remember Judy?” I asked.

  “Judy?”

  “The homeless woman who lived in our old neighborhood. Before the divorce.”

  “Oh, Judy. Of course.”

  “I wonder whatever happened to her.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And I wonder what happens to homeless people when they die. They must die right in the streets. Or in a park. Or even here in Grand Central. But you never hear about that. You never hear on the news that someone found a dead person in the train station.”

  “Stacey!” exclaimed Dad.

  “Well, you don’t.” I paused. “You know, there’s an awful lot to worry about.”

  “But that isn’t your job,” countered my father.

  We were approaching the gate to my train. A ragged man, his feet wrapped in newspapers, was standing at the gate, his hand extended toward us.

  “Wait, Dad,” I said. I opened my purse (not a good thing to do in the streets or train stations of NYC, but sometimes you don’t have much choice), and found a five-dollar bill. I gave it to the man.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “God bless you.”

  “You’re welcome…. Um, good luck.”

  “Stacey, that was very nice of you,” Dad said gently after we had passed the man, “but you can’t take care of everybody, you know.”

  I nodded. “But I can try.”

  I found a seat on the train. Dad waited on the platform until the doors closed. We waved to each other through a window. Then as the train eased down the track, my father turned and walked off.

  I slept all the way home.

  * * *

  Mrs. Pike met my train in Stoneybrook. “Hi,” she said stiffly as I slid into the front seat and closed the door. She pulled out of the parking lot before I had even buckled my seat belt.

  “Is anything wrong?” I asked nervously. Maybe Mrs. Pike resented spending so much time helping Mom and me.

  “There’s a slight problem at your house,” she admitted.

  I must have turned pale or looked like I was going to faint, because Mrs. Pike added in a rush, “Oh, it isn’t your mother! She’s just fine. It’s a matter of scheduling. You’ll see when we get there.”

  I had a feeling I was in Big Trouble.

  Mrs. Pike parked in our driveway, and I dashed into the house ahead of her. I heard voices coming from the kitchen. Was Mom out of bed?

  No. In the kitchen were Mrs. Kishi, Mrs. Arnold, and a woman in a white uniform. They were drinking coffee.

  “Hi,” I said uncertainly. “Where’s my mother?”

  “She’s upstairs, asleep,” answered Mrs. Arnold.

  Mrs. Pike joined us in the kitchen then. “Stacey,” she said, “this is Miss Koppelman. She’s from a visiting nurse service in Stamford. Your father hired her to stay with your mother last night.”

  “He did? He didn’t tell me. At least, I don’t think he told me.”

  “And Mrs. Kishi has been here since midnight,” Mallory’s mother went on. “She thought she was supposed to be here until eight this morning, and Mrs. Arnold arrived at six.”

  “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

  Mrs. Kishi smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It isn’t your fault.”

  I never did find out just who had lined up who. Mrs. Pike and I had both been phoning neighbors on Thursday afternoon and evening — without checking with each other. We told people to call us back, or that we’d call them back, and I didn’t keep track of anything. My scheduling system had failed.

  Dawn’s mom had also arrived at midnight on Friday, but had gone home. Plus, after the nurse and neighbors left on Saturday morning, there was peace until ten A.M., when two other neighbors arrived. I was more confused than they were. (But I think Miss Koppelman had been the most confused of all.)

  I apologized to the two neighbors who had shown up, and told them they could go home. Then I told my mom she was in my sole care.

  And then I somehow fell asleep.

  When I woke up, it was almost three o’clock in the afternoon. And Mrs. Pike was with my mother. Mom had had to phone her earlier because she’d needed to take her pills, which were in the kitchen, and she didn’t want to wake me. Luckily, Mrs. Pike seemed a lot jollier than she had at the train station at the crack of dawn. (Well, at the time, it had seemed like the crack of dawn, considering it was Saturday.)

  “Stacey,” said Mom as Mrs. Pike was leaving. “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “You are one of the most mature and reliable thirteen-year-olds I know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you cannot be everything to everyone.”

  “I think Dad tried to tell me that this morning,” I said, and settled in for a long discussion.

  By Thursday, the day of Mallory’s sitting job at the Barretts’ house, my mother was finally better. Sometimes I let her come downstairs for meals. She began to read more, sleep less during the day, and watch less television. On Wednesday when she said she no longer needed someone at the house while I was at school, I said okay, and stopped lining up the neighbors for Mom-sitting. As long as my mother could reach someone by phone she’d be all right. But I still insisted on coming straight home after school and staying there, except when I went to the BSC meeting.

  Mal rang the Barretts’ bell at three-thirty on Thursday afternoon. Mrs. Barrett herself answered the door, carrying Marnie on her hip.

  “Hi,” Mal greeted them. “Where are Buddy and Suzi?” Often, they fight over who gets to answer the door.

  “They’re down in the rec room,” replied Mrs. Barrett. “They seem awfully busy, but I’m not sure what they’re doing.”

  “Ooh, mysterious,” said Mal. She spoke to Mrs. Barrett for a moment, then took Marnie from her and carried her to the rec room. On the way, she spoke soothingly to Marnie, who sometimes fusses when her mother leaves. “What are your brother and sister doing?” she said. “What are they up to? Are they ordering more things? My brothers and sisters can’t do that anymore, you know. They spent all their money. It’s gone.”

  “All gone!” cried Marnie.

  Mal smiled. “That’s right. All gone.”

  “Doose?” asked Marnie hopefully.

  “You want some juice? Well, in just a minute. First let me see how Buddy and Suzi are doing.”

  Mallory had heard the front door close by then, and knew Mrs. Barrett had left the house. She was relieved that Marnie had made the transition from Mom to sitter without any tears.

  “Kids?” said Mal as she entered the rec room. “Hi, what are you doing?”

  “Is Mom gone?” was Buddy’s reply.

  “Yup.”

  “Doose?” asked Marnie again.

  What a conversation. Mal asked her question again, only this time she tried Suzi. “What are you doing, Suzi?”

  Buddy and Suzi were seated on the floor, surrounded by junk.

  “This is the stuff we bought,” she informed Mal. “Every single thing.”

  “Our friends are coming over with their stuff,” added Buddy.

  “Doose?”

  “Okay, I’ll get you some juice,” said Mal, who still wasn’t sure what Buddy and Suzi were doing.

  While Mallory was in the kitchen with Marnie, the doorbell rang. Buddy raced to answer it. He let Haley and Matt inside. Presently, Jake Kuhn, Nicky, Vanessa, and Margo arrived. Just as Buddy had said, each came with all the stuff he or she had ordered. The Barretts’ rec room looked like a dime store.

  The kids were examining their products.

  Mal looked at them, too. “So?” she said.

  “So we are going to sell this stuff,” Buddy told her.

  Mal coughed. “Excuse me?”

  “We are going to sell everything.”

  Sell it? Who on earth would buy it? This was the mother of all bad ideas.

  “You’re going to set up a stand?” asked Mal. “Have a store?”

&nbsp
; “Oh, no,” said Haley. “Vanessa had a much better idea.”

  Mallory eyed her sister. “What’s your idea?”

  “We are going to be salesman. I mean, salespeople. We are going to travel around the neighborhood with our products. We’ll display them in a wagon or something. We’ll go to every house. That way, we won’t have to wait for people to come to us.”

  “And you’re going to call, ‘Get your tie-straightener here!’ Things like that?” asked Mal, trying to look serious.

  “It’s a necktie-knotter,” said Margo impatiently.

  “Whatever,” said Mal.

  “Better than that,” spoke up Nicky. “We’re going to put on a show.”

  “Like those old-time medicine shows,” explained Haley, “when people loaded their products onto a cart and went all over the west, giving talks about their amazing medicines and putting on demonstrations.”

  “Only we are going to write songs —” said Nicky.

  “Rap songs,” interrupted Jake.

  “— and make up dances —”

  “And poems,” interrupted Vanessa, who wants to be a poet.

  “And maybe even plays,” finished up Nicky.

  “You’re going to sell your stuff by singing rap songs?” Mal was incredulous.

  “Yeah. And you know what, you guys?” said Vanessa. “We better get the triplets over here. They have a lot of stuff to sell. But more important, they’d be really good at performing rap songs in our show. I mean, they’re triplets. They’d look so cool singing rap. They can dress the same and fix their hair the same. Now let’s see. What could we call them?”

  “Don’t you think you better find out first if they’ll be in the show?” asked Mal. “Maybe they won’t want to do it.”

  “Oh, they will,” Vanessa assured her. “They’re broke. And they want those yo-yos. The light-up kind, like David Michael’s.”

  However, to be on the safe side, Nicky phoned his brothers, who did want to be in the show and said they’d come right over. When they arrived, Buddy greeted them at the door with, “We have to think of a name for you guys. Something better than The Rapping Triplets. That was Suzi’s idea.”

  The triplets joined the other kids in the Barretts’ rec room.