Stacey's Broken Heart

  “Sure. Okay,” Abby agreed. “I’ll try to remember I’m a president and not a dictator.”

  Claudia laughed. “Good idea.”

  With that done, Abby set to work laying out sheets of posterboard, markers, glitter pens, crayons, and paint. “Okay, guys,” she said to the group. “The festival is next Saturday. We’ll start at noon. There will be games, food, and fun. We’ll hold it at …” She looked around. “Where?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Mallory asked.

  “I figured I’d come up with someplace,” Abby answered.

  “I thought it was going to be at your house,” Jessi said.

  “We could have it there. But it’s sort of out of the way. How about the schoolyard?”

  “I could call the school board president and ask for permission,” Mary Anne offered. “It’s short notice, though. And what would we write on the posters?”

  “I know,” Abby said. “You go inside and try to call the school board president and we’ll leave that part blank until we hear from you.”

  “Okay,” Mary Anne agreed. “I think Sharon has the president’s number somewhere.” (Sharon is Dawn’s mother, Mary Anne’s stepmother.)

  Mary Anne left and the kids spread out, each with a piece of posterboard. “Make sure you say that this is a BSC festival,” Abby told the kids. “That way people know it’s going to be good.”

  “How do you spell it?” asked Archie.

  “Spell what?” Claudia asked him.

  “I don’t know,” Archie answered with a shrug. “I can’t spell anything.”

  “Spell Mexican,” Margo requested.

  Claudia sighed and frowned, thinking hard. “I’d better do that,” Mallory jumped in. She could just imagine the creative spelling Claudia would come up with.

  For the next hour, the kids worked on their posters. Norman, who is overweight (though he’s dieting), filled the board with pictures of tacos, chili, burritos, and tortillas. “That’s nice artwork, Norman, but there’s no room left for writing,” Jessi pointed out gently.

  “Oops,” said Norman, absently brushing blue paint through his wispy blond hair. “Could I have another board?” There was one extra board, so Jessi gave it to him.

  His sister, Sara, drew a great burro with a colorful Mexican serape on its back. She wrote BSC Mexican Fe — in huge letters, and then decided she had run out of room. Claudia helped her fit the rest in. When they were done it said:

  “Nice spelling,” Mallory said, looking down at Claudia and Sara as they worked.

  Claudia looked up and chewed on her lip anxiously. “Not even close?”

  “Close but …” Mallory got on her knees and tried to fix the spelling mistakes with a marker as neatly as she could.

  “Hey, cut it out!” Becca shouted at Jackie, who was shooting globs of glitter onto her arm from a glitter pen.

  Abby took the pen from him. “Try not to waste the glitter,” she told him. “We don’t have a lot of it.”

  “Yuck! It’s all over me!” Becca complained, wiping a smear of gold glitter down her arm.

  “Smear it on your poster,” Abby suggested.

  In fifteen minutes, Mary Anne returned to the barn. “No luck,” she reported. “The school can’t let us use the schoolyard because of insurance. I asked Sharon, though, and she said we could have it here.”

  “Cool!” Abby exclaimed. “Everybody write that the festival will be here.”

  “Where is here?” Charlotte asked.

  “One seventy-seven Burnt Hill Road,” Mary Anne told her.

  Mallory checked her watch and saw that they’d already been there about an hour. “We have to be home in an hour to go visit my uncle,” she said.

  “I’m supposed to get these guys back by then, too,” Abby said, frowning as she looked at the posters. “Okay, everybody. We have to pick up speed here. The first person done gets to keep the markers and the crayons. Ready, set, go!”

  The kids started writing and drawing furiously. Crayons actually flew into the air as they were finished with them. “You can slow down a little,” Mallory advised, nervous about what this frenzy of activity might produce.

  “Done!” Shea Rodowski announced in about ten minutes.

  “Let’s see,” Claudia said skeptically. Shea held up a swirl of scribble-scrabble with letters mixed up in it. “I can’t read it,” she said.

  One by one Shea picked out all the letters to the words. They were all there, only impossible for anyone else to understand. “I win,” he announced.

  “No fair,” Vanessa protested. “His is a mess!”

  “Oh, yeah? Let’s see yours,” Shea challenged her.

  Vanessa’s was also hastily thrown together. In the center of a colorful blur of glitter, a poem was written in tiny script. “I’ll read it,” she declared. “Come to the Mexican fest. The food will be the best. Games galore and much, much more. So put it to the test.”

  “Nice,” said Abby, “but you don’t say where or when.”

  “Oh, they’ll figure that out,” Vanessa insisted.

  “How?” Mallory asked, rolling her eyes.

  “People talk,” Vanessa said. “Or they can go look at another sign.”

  “I finished first, so I win,” Shea said, collecting the pens and crayons.

  Sara gathered her markers and crayons defensively. “You can’t have them yet! I’m not done making a border.”

  “Wait until everyone’s finished,” Abby told Shea. “You all have ten more minutes, then we have to go and hang them up.”

  When the ten minutes were up, Mallory couldn’t believe how messy the signs were. The writing was either sloppy, nearly illegible, or too small to read. The words were full of misspellings. Some of the artwork was cute, but a lot of it had been done too quickly, dashed off in order to win the crayons and markers.

  Abby gathered up the signs. Mallory wanted to say that they were too awful to put up, but she didn’t want to offend the kids. Jessi, Claudia, and Mary Anne also looked concerned; they probably felt the same as Mallory.

  Mal thought about Kristy and could easily imagine her speaking up. “No way,” she would say. “It would be totally embarrassing to put those up!” She might say it in private when the kids wouldn’t hear, but she’d certainly say it.

  Mallory felt that in Kristy’s absence someone should say something. She couldn’t get up the nerve to do it, though. Perhaps she was being too critical. The posters might not really be as bad as she thought.

  The group split up, with each baby-sitter taking a bunch of kids around to put up signs. They hung them on trees and electric poles. At the end of the hour, they returned to the barn. “Well, that’s done,” Abby said, brushing her hands together.

  Just then Mr. and Mrs. Pike pulled up in the family’s minivan to pick up the girls. Mallory didn’t think about the signs again until after supper when Abby called. “We have to collect all the signs,” she said. “Anna and my mother think they look terrible.”

  “No kidding,” Mallory said wryly.

  “What? You thought so, too? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You’re the president!” Mal exploded.

  “Yeah, well … I was just anxious to get them up, but I took down all the ones I could find. If you see any more, just yank them off.”

  “What will we do for signs?” Mallory asked.

  “I’ll make them,” Abby volunteered.

  “Are we going to have to pay for more supplies?” Mallory asked.

  “No. I’ll borrow them from Claudia, I guess.”

  “Okay. ’Bye.” Mallory hung up and then called me in the city. She couldn’t believe they’d wasted the day and the money for the supplies. “Besides, anyone who already saw the signs probably thinks we’re crazy. Abby is fun and I like her a lot, but we need Kristy back,” she said to me. “And we need her BAAAD!”

  On Sunday, Dad and I took a cab from his apartment on East 65th Street to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the e
ast side of Central Park. I just love the Met. There is always so much to see.

  Dad was interested in a special exhibit of medieval armor which I can’t say thrilled me. “So,” he asked as we wandered through the cases of gleaming breastplates, helmets, and swords, “how’s everything with you?”

  “Good,” I said. “I guess.”

  “You guess?” Dad leaned toward a case for a closer look at a metal boot.

  I studied my reflection in the glass. In a strange way, I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. The person in the glass looked older than I remembered. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, or the sophisticated museum setting in the background.

  “You don’t sound certain,” Dad said, studying me.

  “Um … no, I’m sure. It’s just that Robert has been acting weird lately.”

  Dad frowned. “Weird? In what way?”

  “I don’t know…. I feel like there’s something he’s not telling me.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be worried about it,” I replied.

  Dad nodded and we walked on to the next case. We continued looking at the armor without talking until we got to the end of the exhibit. “Now where to?” he asked.

  “The Egyptians?” I suggested. I visit the Egyptian section every time I come to the museum. I love the jewelry they wore, and those great headdresses.

  “Okay,” Dad agreed. We headed across the main lobby and over to the exhibit. The way you enter the exhibit is so cool. You walk through a small passage that resembles a pyramid doorway. Every time I go through it I imagine myself as an archaeologist discovering all that great stuff for the first time.

  After passing by the same displays I’d seen a million times, I stopped at a small mummy lying in a stone sarcophagus. I hadn’t remembered ever seeing it before. I bent down to read the card on the corner of the glass case surrounding the chipped, square, stone tomb. “Wow,” I said to Dad who was by my side. “He was a pharaoh at only fourteen.”

  Dad nodded absently as if his mind was on something else. “You know, Stacey,” he began. “About you and Robert … do you think you might be a little too young to be dating steadily?”

  “No,” I answered bluntly.

  “I think maybe you are,” he said thoughtfully. “You’re only thirteen. That’s awfully young.”

  I pointed at the mummy. “This guy here was only fourteen. And he was the pharaoh of all Egypt!” I said. I didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. Why was Dad saying this now? He’d known about Robert for a long time.

  “This guy here was also dead at fourteen,” Dad pointed out. “Most of the ancient Egyptians didn’t live past forty. But you’re going to live a lot longer than that. You’ll meet a lot of people in your lifetime. You’ll go to college and meet young men. You’ll work, travel, and do all sorts of things. You’ll meet a lot of people before you’re even out of your twenties. Are you sure you want to limit yourself to only one boy when you’re still so young?”

  I regretted having said anything about Robert. Dad was probably saying all this because he thought Robert had upset me. He’s very protective that way.

  “Robert’s a great guy,” I said to set his mind at ease.

  “I’m not saying he’s not,” Dad replied, as we walked down the hallway past the golden dog god statues, marble plaques covered with hieroglyphics, and the mummy cases. “Even if he were the greatest guy on Earth, I think you should meet others so you can compare.”

  “I don’t want to compare,” I grumbled.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Robert and I are perfect together.”

  “Are you sure?” Dad asked.

  “Yes.” We had come to the huge room where the temple of Dendur sits across a large pool. I took the opportunity to escape from Dad and his lecture. Acting as though I were wildly eager to get to the temple, I hurried toward it, leaving him standing in the entranceway.

  As I climbed the wide stone steps to the temple, I realized how annoyed I was with him. What was he trying to do? Break up Robert and me? Just because his marriage hadn’t worked out didn’t mean he had the right to get between two people who were perfectly happy.

  Me and my big mouth. Why did I have to tell him about my worries anyway? He was probably saying all this now because I’d given him an opening. He figured I was concerned about things with Robert so he’d take the opportunity to make things worse. He wanted us to break up. He was saying we were too young because he thought I was still a little girl.

  Dad caught up to me near one of the temple walls. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” he said.

  I was startled. I thought I’d given him the slip in a subtle way. I looked around the small stone room and saw we were alone. “How could you tell?” I asked.

  “Because you stomped away from me just now.”

  “I didn’t stomp.”

  Dad laughed lightly. “I’d simply like you to consider what I’ve said. From what you told me earlier, it doesn’t sound as if everything is so perfect between Robert and you. Things might go more smoothly with someone else.”

  “Things are fine the way they are,” I told him firmly. “I’m just worried over nothing. Forget I said anything about it.”

  “You were the one who said he was lying to you.”

  “I said he was keeping something from me. I did not say he was lying. You saw the flowers I brought with me to the city,” I replied. “Those were from Robert. Remember? Would he have given me an expensive, humongous bouquet if there was a problem?”

  I noticed that my voice was amplified and ringing in that small stone space. It made me realize how upset I sounded.

  Dad looked at me for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “We can forget about it for now. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed, folding my arms. “Good.”

  We continued through the rest of the exhibit without much conversation. I suppose I was still mad, although I didn’t want to be. But I couldn’t help it. Dad wasn’t supposed to say, “I don’t know.” He was supposed to say, “You’re right, Stacey. The flowers mean everything is fine. I was wrong.”

  He made me feel as if I had to defend my relationship with Robert, as if something was wrong with it.

  An hour later, we left the museum, still not talking naturally to each other. Dad tried a few times, but I just answered him stiffly. I wasn’t ready to forget our argument.

  Robert and I were right for each other, and nothing was going to change that — no matter what Dad thought.

  On Monday I woke up early, eager to see the Walkers. I heard the water running in the bathroom and knew Dad was getting ready for work. It’s unusual for me to be with him on a weekday.

  Things between Dad and me had smoothed out during the evening. We were friends again, although neither of us had mentioned Robert since our talk in the museum. We just sort of let the topic go away. Mom says Dad and I are both “nonconfrontational.” That means we’d rather sidestep an issue than fight about it. She’s right about that.

  I looked through the new clothes Mom and I had bought. It was still awfully warm out. None of them were really right. I narrowed my choices down to a sundress I have with flowers all over it and a straight, black sleeveless dress. I decided the black one looked too dressy, so I went with the sundress.

  As I walked out of my bedroom, Dad came out of the bathroom bundled in a white terrycloth robe. “I’m taking a cab to work. Want a lift to the Walkers’?”

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “We’ll pick up a bagel or something at the corner deli,” he said.

  “Great.” Now that Dad’s single, he usually eats on the run. I think it’s kind of fun and we can usually find something healthy to eat.

  I couldn’t wait to see Henry and Grace again. When I lived in New York full-time they were my favorite kids to baby-sit for. They live near the Museum of Natural History and Henry is wild about the dinosaurs. It’s fun to go
there with them.

  Dad came out of his bedroom looking like Mr. Professional in a light gray summer suit. “Ready?” he asked, taking his briefcase from the coffee table.

  “I think so,” I said. We were at the door when I stopped. “One sec!” I called, hurrying back into the apartment. In my suitcase, I found my Kid-Kit, which I’d packed. “Ready,” I told Dad, running out to the hall.

  We bought breakfast and ate it in the cab. (I had a corn muffin and a carton of milk.) The morning traffic crawled through the streets. I felt as if we’d never get across town, but finally we did. “Have a good day. See you tonight,” Dad said, giving me a kiss as I climbed out of the cab. “Say hello to the Walkers for me.”

  “Okay.” As the car pulled away I turned and looked up at the huge apartment building in front of me. In a flash I remembered when I’d lived in this building. It hadn’t been a particularly happy time because Mom and Dad were always fighting. In fact, I’d probably cried a zillion tears in this building.

  But there had been some good times, too. I was glad to be back for a visit.

  I entered the lobby and spoke to the doorman. “Hi,” I said, not sure if he remembered me. “I’m here to see the Walkers in eighteen-E.”

  He smiled and picked up the phone on the wall. “Ms. McGill is here,” he said into it. He did remember me! “Go on up.”

  It was strange being in the lobby, as if I’d gone back in time. I felt as if I’d never left. I half expected to go to the twelfth floor where we used to live, and hear Mom and Dad screaming at each other from down the hall.

  “Nice to see you,” the doorman said as I headed to the elevator.

  “You, too,” I called back to him.

  On the eighteenth floor I rang the doorbell of apartment E and Mrs. Walker answered. “Stacey!” she cried happily. “Come in!”

  “Your hair looks great that way,” I said sincerely. She’d cut her curly, medium length black hair very short. Now her cap of short curls set off her large, dark, carefully lined eyes and showed off the dangling bronze earrings she wore. They spun on either ear like tiny mobiles.