Tallahassee Higgins

  "Don't you dare talk to me like that! You'll stay there in Hyattsdale till I send for you!"

  "And when will that be?"

  "Give me another month or two. That's not so long, Talley." Liz's voice softened a little and took on a pleading note.

  "It's forever!" I looked up as Aunt Thelma appeared in the doorway.

  "Let me speak to her when you're finished," she said.

  "Aunt Thelma wants to talk to you," I said to Liz.

  "Listen, sweetie, I can't stay on the phone any longer. This is really costing me. Tell her I really appreciate her taking care of you and give my love to Dan. Okay?"

  Before I could say another word, the phone clicked, and Liz was gone.

  As I started to slam the receiver down, Aunt Thelma grabbed it. "She didn't hang up, did she?" She spoke into the receiver, "Liz? Liz?" Then she turned to me. "Didn't you tell her I wanted to speak to her?"

  "She said she couldn't afford to talk anymore," I yelled. Ducking under my aunt's arm, I ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to my room.

  "She isn't sending me a ticket," I cried to Melanie. "Not for a long, long time. And she's not a movie star yet. She's just a waitress like she was in Florida."

  "Poor Tallahassee," Melanie whispered. "But don't worry. Maybe Richard Gere will come to the Big Carrot for lunch one day and he'll see Liz and decide she's exactly the person he's looking for. Then, before you know it, you and me will be in California lying on a beach with Liz and we'll all live happily ever after."

  I hugged Melanie and thought about Richard Gere walking into the Big Carrot. Liz would ask him if he wanted the special, and he would say, "I think I'll have you instead," and he would carry her out of the Big Carrot, just like he carried Debra Winger away at the end of An Officer and a Gentleman. "You're coming back to the studio with me," he would say, and overnight Liz would become a star and I would go to California.

  Chapter 9

  THE NEXT WEEK Dawn and her friends joined Jane and me at our lunch table. "I thought you'd be in California by now." Dawn took a sip of chocolate milk and stared at me.

  "Well," I said, "they're having some trouble with the script. They're reshooting a lot of scenes, and they've put off going to the Caribbean. That's why Liz hasn't sent for me. Things are all up in the air right now. You know how it is in Hollywood."

  "It's not easy to be a movie star," Jane added loyally. "I saw Meryl Streep once on Good Morning, America, and she said your personal life really suffers. You have to sacrifice an awful lot."

  Dawn nodded. "Being a star must be worth it, though."

  Terri agreed. "They have tons of money and big houses and fancy cars. They all drive Mercedes or Jaguars."

  "So it's worth waiting for," Karen said, looking at me over her tuna sandwich. "If it's really true." She and Dawn exchanged a quick look.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  Karen leaned toward me, her sandwich forgotten. "Me and Dawn read lots of magazines, and we haven't seen anything about Richard Gere being in a movie called The Island."

  "That's because it's top secret, dummy." I glared at her, but I had this awful feeling that she and Dawn had decided that I was lying about Liz.

  "You don't know anything about Hollywood, Karen," Jane said coolly, "so don't argue with somebody who does."

  Karen picked up her tray. "I'm not sitting with anybody who calls me a dummy." She stood up, and Dawn and Terri followed her across the cafeteria.

  Angrily, I watched them crowding in at another table. They were laughing now, and looking at Jane and me. "Stuck-up snobs," I muttered.

  "Don't let them bother you," Jane said. "What do they know?"

  ***

  To make things worse, I got in trouble with Mrs. Duffy that afternoon. She was already mad because I hadn't handed in my math homework. Then I got a bad grade on my spelling test, and I couldn't remember the year the Civil War began. She really blew up, though, when she caught me reading National Velvet during current events. She made me stand up and tell the whole class about it, and then she caught me as I was leaving and told me I'd better start putting more effort into my schoolwork.

  "When you came to me," Mrs. Duffy said, "I didn't think you'd be here long enough for me to worry about your progress, but now you'd better start paying attention and stop daydreaming out the window. You don't want to repeat the sixth grade, do you?"

  Well, of course I didn't. Nor did I want Mrs. Duffy to have the conference with my aunt and uncle that she was threatening. So I promised I would try harder.

  "I hope so, Tallahassee." Mrs. Duffy smiled at me then. "You're a smart little girl. There's no reason for you to do so poorly."

  She paused, and I started to stand up, thinking she was finished. Jane was outside waiting for me, and I didn't want her to freeze to death.

  "Just a minute," Mrs. Duffy added. "Is there anything bothering you that you'd like to talk to me about?"

  I rearranged my books to avoid looking at her. "No, ma'am," I said.

  "I know you must miss your mother," the teacher said gently.

  I fumbled with the zipper on my ski jacket, ashamed to tell her I was scared my mother had dumped me on Uncle Dan's doorstep like a cat she didn't want anymore. "She'll be sending me a ticket soon," I told Mrs. Duffy so she wouldn't feel sorry for me.

  "I hear she has a role in a movie," Mrs. Duffy said. "You must be very proud of her."

  I nodded without looking at her. "Can I go now?" I asked her. "Jane's waiting for me."

  "Yes, of course, Tallahassee." Mrs. Duffy patted my shoulder. "No more reading in your lap, though," she reminded me. "And please hand in your homework on time."

  "Yes, ma'am." I ran from the room and found Jane on the steps outside.

  "Was she mad?" she asked.

  I shook my head. "No, she just wants me to do my homework and stuff."

  As we crossed the street, I asked Jane more about Meryl Streep. "Did she ever abandon her daughter or anything like that?"

  The wind was whipping Jane's hair around her face, and her nose and cheeks were red. "I don't think Meryl Streep has a daughter," she said.

  When I didn't say anything, Jane walked a little more slowly. "Are you worried about Liz?" she asked softly.

  I shrugged and jammed my hands deeper in the pockets of my jacket. The wind was knifing right through my clothes and I felt like I'd never be warm again. Not even in the summer.

  "Sometimes I think she doesn't miss me very much," I said without looking up from the cracked and uneven sidewalk.

  "She's your mother, Talley. Of course she misses you!" Jane sounded shocked.

  "Oh, Jane," I sighed. "You just don't know. Liz is so different from your mom." I glanced at her, wondering how I could ever explain Liz to a person who had lived in the same house all her life with both of her parents. She had brothers and sisters and grandmothers and grandfathers and uncles and aunts and dozens of cousins.

  And Mrs. DeFlores stayed home all day and took care of her kids and cooked and cleaned and wore polyester slacks like Aunt Thelma and had her hair permed at a beauty parlor. She would never go around the block on a motorcycle, let alone all the way to California. She didn't want to be a movie star. Or a singer. As far as I could see, she just wanted to be an ordinary, everyday sort of person.

  Grumpy as Mrs. DeFlores was, Jane was lucky in some ways, I thought. When she walked in her front door, she knew her mother would be in the kitchen, feeding the baby or fixing dinner.

  "I think it would be wonderful to have a mother like Liz," Jane said, interrupting my thoughts. "A real live movie star. Just think, when she sends you that ticket, she may meet you at the airport with Richard Gere."

  "By then, he might be an old man," I muttered.

  "Don't be silly." Jane turned to me. "Do you know what my mother is doing right now?" Jane kicked a stone so hard it sailed up in the air and bounced down the sidewalk ahead of us, narrowly missing a skinny black cat.

  "She's wallpapering
the bathroom for at least the third time. That's her idea of fun and excitement. My dad says he's never sure he's in the right house because she's always redecorating and moving the furniture around."

  "At least you know where she is, Jane." I bent down and called to the cat. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

  As he circled my legs, purring, I stroked him. He reminded me of my old cat, Bilbo, and I wondered sadly what had ever become of him. "I remember you," I thought, picturing his big, green eyes and his shiny, black fur, "even if nobody else does. And I miss you."

  "When I grow up," Jane said loudly, "I'm going to have an exciting life like Liz. I'm not going to stay home all day and wallpaper bathrooms."

  "Then don't have any kids, Jane." I watched the cat give himself a little shake and walk off, twitching his tail, his head high.

  "Liz had you." Jane jumped up and grabbed a tree limb hanging over the sidewalk. She chinned herself and dropped back to earth.

  "Lots of movie stars have kids," she continued, a little out of breath, "and they don't get married, just like Liz. And they still have exciting lives."

  "You shouldn't believe everything you read in People magazine." I grabbed the limb and chinned myself five times in a row without letting my feet touch the sidewalk. I knew I was going to get mad at Jane if she didn't shut up about movie stars and their exciting lives.

  "You sure are in a bad mood today," Jane said. "Just because of Dawn and Karen."

  "Race you to Uncle Dan's." I started running before she had a chance to say yes or no. The big old houses on Oglethorpe Street flashed past me, and I heard Jane yelling at me to slow down, but I couldn't stop. For a few seconds I felt as if I could run all the way to California without stopping once and get there before it was dark.

  Chapter 10

  ONE AFTERNOON JANE and I were slogging home under a dark sky. It was almost the end of March, but, except for a lonely crocus poking up here and there, it didn't look much like spring. The wind was still cold, the grass was brown and marshy with puddles, and the rain hung in huge drops on the bare branches and dripped slowly to the ground. A few drab little birds—sparrows, I guess—huddled together on the telephone lines, their feathers fluffed to keep warm. They made a sad, wheezing sound, nothing you could call a song.

  "Want to come over for a while?" Jane asked when we got to her corner.

  "Is your mother still mad about last Saturday?" I looked at Jane uneasily. Mrs. DeFlores had grounded Jane because we had gone to the park without telling her and come home with wet feet and muddy jeans.

  "I don't think so." Jane didn't sound very positive, but she added, "We could go straight upstairs. I've got something to show you."

  As soon as we were safely in her room, with the door shut, Jane pulled an old photo album out from under her bed. "I found this last night when I was looking for a dictionary. See if you can guess who the people are."

  Opening the album, she spread it out on her lap. The first picture was of two little girls squinting into the sun. They were holding dolls, but their faces were too blurry to tell what they really looked like. Underneath, somebody had written, "Linda and Liz, Christmas, 1961."

  "Is that my mother?" I stared at the little face, fascinated.

  "Isn't she cute? Look at those long braids." Jane smiled at little Liz and then tapped her mother's face. "She's kind of pudgy, don't you think?" She puffed her own cheeks out and giggled.

  Jane skimmed through the album, flipping past page after page of photographs of the DeFlores family at long ago Christmases, Easters, and Thanksgivings, every now and then finding Liz in one of them.

  "Here she is when she was your age." Jane paused on the first good picture of Liz she'd produced. She was standing next to Mrs. DeFlores on the front steps of Jane's house, grinning at the camera, her head tilted to one side, her tawny hair hanging loose in long waves. She was wearing bell-bottom jeans and a tie-dyed T-shirt. Mrs. DeFlores, shorter and plumper than Liz, was dressed much the same.

  "Don't they look funny? Like hippies or something." Jane laughed. "I bet they thought they were so cool."

  I didn't reply. I was staring at Liz, wishing I looked like her. She didn't have rabbit teeth like mine, and she didn't have dirty-red hair. Even when she was twelve, Liz was beautiful.

  Jane tugged at the page, trying to turn it. "Wait till you see the next ones," she said. "You'll die laughing."

  Jane was right. When Liz and Mrs. DeFlores appeared again, they were teenagers. Right in front of our eyes we could see them changing. Liz stayed tall and skinny, but Mrs. DeFlores started getting a little plumper. Although she wore bell-bottoms, her hair wasn't nearly as long as Liz's, and she didn't wrap bandanas around it.

  "Your mom was a real flower child, wasn't she?" Jane asked. "My father told me he used to tease her about being a hippie; he called her Hyattsdale's own Joan Baez because she used to play the guitar and sing folk songs."

  "Who's this guy?" I pointed at a tall teenager with long, red hair. In most of the pictures, he had his arm around Mrs. DeFlores, but he often seemed to be smiling at Liz. "It's not your dad."

  "No." Jane stared at the boy's face. "He must have been Mom's boyfriend." She sounded puzzled. "I always thought Daddy was her first boyfriend." She bent her head over the picture. "It's Liz he's looking at, isn't it? And she's looking at him, too."

  I nodded and turned to the last page. There was only one photograph on it—a class picture, I guess—the kind you see in yearbooks. It was of the same red-haired guy, the one with the big teeth I'd seen in all the other snapshots. Across the bottom of it he'd written, "To Linda, with all my love, Johnny."

  "Does he remind you of anybody?" I whispered.

  Jane sucked in her breath. "He looks like you, Tallahassee!"

  We stared at each other, then at Johnny. My heart was pounding so fast, I thought it would fly out of my mouth. If what I was thinking was true, it was no wonder that Mrs. DeFlores didn't like Liz or me.

  "Can you find out anything about him? Like his last name or something?" I asked Jane.

  In answer, she reached under her bed again and pulled out a Northeastern High School yearbook. Flipping to the seniors, she studied each face till we found him. "John Randolph Russell," Jane read, "'Reds,' Gymkhana Club. Ambition: See the world."

  Then we sat and stared at each other. "Liz never told you your father's name, did she?" Jane asked.

  I stared at Johnny's dirty-red hair, at the freckles visible even in the photograph, at the big front teeth. "The only thing I really know about my father is that I look just like him."

  We turned back to the album and studied all the pictures of Johnny. "What do you think happened to him?" Jane stared at me.

  "I don't know, but I'm sure going to ask Liz." I gazed at Johnny's smiling face. He looked nice, I thought, and funny. In the old color prints, he was always clowning around and making silly faces, standing on his hands sometimes or hanging upside down by his knees.

  "Can I have this?" My hand hovered over the signed portrait.

  Jane shook her head. "Mom would notice if you took that. Take one of the snapshots instead."

  It was a hard choice, but I finally decided on a picture of Johnny sitting on a wall. He was wearing rainbow-striped suspenders, a T-shirt, and faded jeans. His feet were bare and his long hair was blowing in the breeze, and he was smiling as if the summer sun would never stop shining on him.

  Just as I slipped the picture in my pocket, Mrs. DeFlores opened the door. I don't know what she was going to say, but when she saw the album and the yearbook, she snatched them away from Jane, her face reddening.

  "What are you doing with these?" she asked.

  "I was just showing Tallahassee some pictures of her mother," Jane said. "I didn't think you'd mind."

  "Well, I do mind." Mrs. DeFlores glared at us, the books pressed to her bosom. She started to leave the room, then paused in the doorway. "Oh, I came up to tell you that your aunt's home, Tallahassee, so you can run along over
there. Jane, you get started on your schoolwork."

  We sat still for a minute, listening to Mrs. DeFlores go downstairs. "What do you think she'd say if you asked her about Johnny?" I asked Jane.

  "I'd be scared to," Jane said frankly. "She'd get really mad, I just know she would."

  I stood up and started pulling on my jacket as Susan stuck her head in the door.

  "You have to go home," she said in her usual bratty way. "My mommy said so."

  I crossed my eyes at her and ran downstairs, passing Mrs. DeFlores in the kitchen. She didn't even bother to say good-bye.

  ***

  At Uncle Dan's house I ran to the basket where Aunt Thelma always put the mail. As usual, there was nothing for me.

  "It's about time you got home," Aunt Thelma greeted me. "Set the table and then help me fix the salad."

  Wordlessly, I held out Johnny's picture. "Do you know him?"

  Aunt Thelma snatched the picture out of my hand. "Where did you get this?"

  "Never mind where I got it. Do you know him?" I reached for the picture, but she held on to it, scrutinizing it as if she was memorizing every detail.

  "Of course I know him," she said slowly. "It's Johnny Russell. He lived right around the corner on Forty-first Avenue. I used to babysit for him."

  "Does he still live there?"

  "He was killed in Vietnam," she said softly, "just before the war ended."

  I sucked in my breath and my knees felt weak. "He's dead?" I whispered.

  She nodded, gazing past me as if she could see Johnny somewhere beyond me. "His name's on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. Your uncle and I went down to see it."

  "He's my father, isn't he?" My mouth felt funny saying the words—dry and stiff and sort of shaky—but I forced them out.

  "Your father?" Laying the picture on the counter, Aunt Thelma opened a kitchen cabinet and started pulling out the things she needed for dinner. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "Look at him." I picked up the picture and waved it at her. "He looks just like me. Same hair, same teeth, same freckles! He's my father, I know he is!" I was yelling now, and Fritzi was barking, circling my feet, making little dashes at my shoes and jeans.