What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [7]
Now I stared at the rooster clock, trying to imagine if there could be any single thing of value or interest to me in it. I had heard that there were jewels inside watches, but I didn’t think anything like that lay inside that rooster; knew if I opened it I would notice nothing but perhaps a rising up of fine dust. I wanted to say clearly to Mrs. O’Donnell that I did not want the clock, but I wanted even more not to hurt her feelings. Therefore I remained silent, while long seconds passed. My stomach felt as though it were being wrung out; I curled and uncurled my toes slowly against the soles of my new flip-flops.
Finally, Mrs. O’Donnell smiled, closemouthed and vaguely regretful; I did the same. She nodded; I hesitated, then nodded, too. Then she said, “You know, you can take as many treats as you want, dear. But let me wrap them up for you. They’ll stain your shirt if you keep them in your pocket that way.”
Apart from that one visit, I never really talked to Mrs. O’Donnell. I didn’t particularly regret her moving. I understood that this meant anything could happen; a kid my age might move in, for example. She might be an only child and I could become her best friend and profit by the spoiling she got from her parents. And we needed younger kids on the block; Sharla and I were the only ones under sixteen. I enjoyed very much the sight of teenage goodnight kissing that went on, both in cars pulled up in front of houses as well as the more chaste variety that took place under yellow porch lights; I thrilled to the screeching sound of peel-outs performed by the neighborhood boys whenever their parents were away; I noted with interest and envy the outfits worn by girlfriends walking down the sidewalks together: neat upside-down V-cuts in pedal pushers, blouses with the collar turned up, white leather bucket purses slung over shoulders, rabbits’ feet on a chain at the side. Those girls wore fat lines of eyeliner, Fire-and-Ice lipstick.
I also liked seeing the teens come back from town with bags from the record store holding the latest 45s; liked knowing they’d probably also been to the drugstore for vanilla Cokes and fries, after which they might have gone behind the store to sneak a smoke. But I would have traded all that happily for some kids our age. If ever we’d taken the risk of telling hard truths, Sharla and I might have admitted to each other that we were lonely.
After I spied the moving van, I ran back in the house and told my mother Mrs. O’Donnell was moving.
“Is it today?” my mother asked. She went to the window, looked out at the van.
“Oh, it is. Poor thing.” She returned to the stove, turned the bacon, drained some grease into an empty milk carton.
“How come you didn’t say anything?” I asked. “How come you didn’t tell me?”
“Well, I did. I’m sure I did.”
“Nuh-uh,” I said, which was my favorite expression. It was rakish, I thought. I recalled now, though, that my mother had told me. But it had been on a rainy day and I’d been reading, and I was close to the end of a chapter in a Nancy Drew book. Who could have expected me to hear anything when a pillow was being lowered onto Nancy’s face?
“How come you called her ‘poor thing’?” I asked.
“Oh.…” My mother laid the bacon out in neat rows on a paper towel.
“Can I have a piece, just one?” I now regretted saying I didn’t want breakfast; the smell of the bacon rivaled my mother’s “My Sin.”
“Yes, I made some for you.”
Ah.
I took