Читать книгу Vivian Untangled - Sarah Hartt-Snowbell - Страница 7

The wind chimes clinked out a hollow fading song. As I passed the display of homemade candles and fake flowers, I got a good whiff of cinnamon, strawberry and eucalyptus. Right across from the greeting card counter, I saw her. She was examining a letter opener. “Expecting mail?” I said.

“Vivi! Am I glad to see you! Did you get in trouble?” she asked in a voice that seemed a bit too cheerful.

I told her what had happened, and she began to laugh. When Deena laughs, it spreads around like the flu. In a second, she had me laughing too. Not just regular laughing, but the kind that makes you pound your fists into your knees. The kind that comes with tears.

The saleslady came out from behind the cash register and gave us the once-over. She twisted her mouth into a crooked wave and looked up into her eyelids.

When we finally stopped laughing, Deena showed me a brass letter-opener. “How does this grab you?” she said.

“I guess it’s okay. You gettin’ it?”

“It sure would make a nifty birthday present for my grandfather,” she said as she placed it back with the others. “Let’s come back for it tomorrow after school. Okay?”

“Why tomorrow?”

“Because it’s three-and-a-half bucks, you goof, and I don’t have enough on me. That’s why.”

“Well then, I’ll come back with you,” I said. “You can count on it.”

We hung around outside for a bit and watched a lady drape tinsel on the Christmas tree in the window. Under the tree, in the glow of tiny coloured lights, I saw a white leather diary. The pages were edged in gold. A strap from the back cover wrapped over the front of the pages and slipped into a gold lock on the front cover. Tied to the strap, with fine red ribbon, was a tiny golden key.

“Oh-h-h, Deena,” I said. “Just feast your eyes on that.”

“What? Where?”

“The diary. Right down there . . . beside the manicure set . . . see? Isn’t it absolutely stunning?”

“Oh, please!” she said. “It’s only a diary, you hangnail. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s perfectly gorgeous!” I said. “Did you ever have a diary?”

“Of course, you doofus! I just got my new one for ’55. You?”

I didn’t answer.

“Yeah, sure. You probably never even had one,” she sneered, then almost screamed, “How can you live without a diary? Everybody has a diary!”

“Well . . . my other one’s filling up real fast,” I said. “When we come back tomorrow, this diary will be mine.”

I always wanted a real diary, but had to make do with an old notebook I had left over from Grade Four. Besides, Mom always says, “If you ask me, those fancy-shmancy diaries are nothing but a waste of money and a bunch of foolishness.”

Deena and I went through our usual string of goodbyes, au revoirs and see-ya-laters. “Snow at last!” she said. “Remember—the mountain on Sunday.” As she reached the corner, she called, “And don’t forget . . . the hot chocolate’s on you.”

I squashed my forehead against the window of Waverly Gifts to take another peek at the diary, then raced home. Great wet snowflakes melted on my cheeks and clung to my hair and eyebrows. The streetlights had come on. I didn’t see it happen. I never do. The glow of streetlights just seems to creep up on you when you’re not looking. I hurried along, stopping now and then to kick at some of the slush-cruds hanging from the car fenders at the curb. It was awfully late, and I knew Mom would be downright mad if I didn’t come up with a pretty good excuse.

Our house isn’t really a house. It’s called a flat. The Kingsleys live in the bottom flat. They’re lucky, because in the summer they can plant a garden, and in the winter they don’t have to bust their backs shovelling stairs—because they don’t have any. Ha!

The middle flat, where the Gravelle family lives, has at least a dozen outside stairs and, of course, no garden. If you ask me, the Gravelles don’t have it so easy, because they have to put up with noise from their upstairs neighbours (for example, moi!), and if they make noise themselves, they get complaints from the Kingsleys under them. Mom says that Mrs. Kingsley has dug hundreds of little dents in her ceiling by bashing it with the handle of her broom. She does that every time Jeanine Gravelle practices the piano over her head. The truth is . . . I always hear Jeanine playing her boogie-woogie music. The beat comes right up through the floor of my room—and I love it.

We live in the top flat. That means we get to share the outside staircase with the Gravelles, but once we open the door at the top of the stairs, we end up with a long inside staircase to climb as well. Believe me, it’s awful when you have to drag home a stack of books or other heavy junk of one kind or another.

Mom says she dreams of living in a bottom flat so she won’t have to go lugging groceries up two flights all the time. But Dad complains that a higher rent would break him altogether. “Even fifty a month for this dump is highway robbery,” he says.

Nobody had bothered doing any shovelling yet, so I scraped my boots back and forth through the snow on each step to clear my own pathway up to the outside door.

Mom swung the inside door open. “Where on earth were you?” she said in her most frantic voice. She was holding a knife.

I slipped by her, dropped my schoolbag onto the little hall table and shimmied out of my jacket. “I was delayed,” I said, following her into the kitchen.

“What do you mean ‘delayed’?”

I watched her cut the ends off the last few string beans and dump them into the enamel pot on the stove. “I was delayed by Mr. Peale,” I said.

“Whatever for?”

“He was commenting on my writing.”

“Oh! You must tell us all about it at suppertime. But right now, you’d better get started on your homework.”

I closed my door and flung my books onto the bed. Homework, nothing! First things first!

I made a list of all the most likely places to find money, did a careful search, and filled in the amounts.

Square wooden bank 13 ¢

Schoolbag 9 ¢

Junk drawer 3 ¢

Desk drawer 4 ¢

Night table 0 ¢

Window ledge 5 ¢

Under the bed 0 ¢

Bottom of the laundry bag 12 ¢

Pockets of everything I own 12 ¢

A grand total of fifty-eight cents!

Math Problem:

Vivian needs a white leather diary with gold all around the edges. The cost of the diary is $3.79. After doing a thorough search of her entire room, she found a measly 58¢.

1. How much more money does Vivian need to buy the diary?

2. What’s the best way for Vivian to get the money she needs?

My life is no picnic. Deena, the most popular kid in the whole school, had a bicycle all her life, and white furniture, and a backyard with grass. Then there’s Shelly. Cool Shelly with her perfectly ironed blouses that stay tucked in and pure white bobby socks that always stay up. I’m the one stuck with ugly hand-me-downs—second-hand clothes from people I don’t even know. I’m the one with torn-at-the-toes socks that creep their way down into my scuffed-up Oxfords. Every time I ever need anything, Mom says, “I hope you understand, dear, but you’ll just have to wait for a good payday.” Then payday comes along, and so does the phone bill or a brake job for the old Studebaker. Dad’s car is older than I am, and it has rust all around the edges. He just laughs and calls it his lace-trimmed chariot. On days when Dad gives me a lift in the morning, I ask him to drop me off a block away from school. “The walk is good for my lungs,” I tell him, and he believes me. He doesn’t know that I’d rather die than have any of the other kids see me getting out of his rusted-out jalopy.

The sound of Dad’s car spluttering to a stop at the curb and the smell of corn and string beans told me it was suppertime. I dropped the fifty-eight cents into my pencil box and spread a few open books out on my desk so that any snoopers would think I was really up to my eyeballs in homework.

Dad stabbed his fork into a jumble of string beans. “So, Vivi. How was your day?”

“I’ve run into a problem,” I said. “Sort of a math problem.”

“Remind me after supper. I’ll help you work it out before driving you over to Grandpa’s.”

Mom poured water into our glasses. “Dan,” she said, “have you been getting any new business lately? Anything from Silhouette? How about Paisley? Did they place any orders?”

Dad clinked his fork onto his plate. “Aaaah, I wish, Jenny,” he said. “They haven’t given us any business for months, and that old galoot Henderson says nobody’s getting a raise this year. He says with business the way it is, we’re all lucky to have jobs . . . and we’d better not make waves. Imagine.”

“Oh, darn!” Mom said. “Isn’t there anything you can do about it?”

His voice flew up a whole notch. “Don’t be such a worrywart!” he said. “We have to take it one step at a time, and that means cutting corners.”

“Cut corners! Cut corners!” shouted Mom. “That’s all we ever seem to do!”

Dad pounded his fist on the table. He almost had all the forks and knives jumping right off the plates. “We’re not the only ones, for cryin’ out loud!” he shouted. “And in case you haven’t noticed, everyone has money troubles these days! That’s reality . . . don’t you get it?”

I’m not an absolute dimwit, you know. That’s probably why people are surprised that I don’t do so great in school. Even my teachers don’t know that when it comes to solving everyday problems, I’m no slouch. Not that I can figure out square roots or breeze through long division like some kind of Einstein. No. It’s that I’m pretty good at things that really matter. Like, at carnivals, I can usually come up with a pretty close guess about how many beans there are in a jar. Okay, maybe that’s not the best example. Once, right in the middle of Woolworth’s, a whole bunch of people kept trying to get this baby to stop crying. “Maybe he’s thirsty.” “Maybe he’s wet.” “Try picking him up.” They carried on as if they’d all just graduated from Doctor Spock University. After they all gave up, I figured I’d give it my best shot. A few peek-a-boos—a couple of funny faces—and, within seconds, the little guy turned all cute and giggly. That’s the kind of stuff I mean. I’m pretty good at things like that. So what I’m getting at is that, lots of times, if I really put my mind to it, I can even get my parents to snap out of their crummy moods. Don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t work every time, but just on the odd chance that it might, I’m always ready to give it a try.

“Say, here’s a good one,” I said. “A big moron and a little moron were walking along the edge of a cliff. The big moron fell off. Why didn’t the little one?”

Mom yanked off her apron. She kept firing words at Dad as if she hadn’t even heard me. “That Drapeau and his promises!” she continued. “Little shrimp of a mayor . . . he’s leading us all into the poorhouse!”

Dad’s voice boomed, “Give the man a chance, for heaven’s sake! He’s only been in office a few months, and if I remember correctly, you voted for him.”

“He was a little more-on,” I said. “Get it? He didn’t fall off, because he was a little . . . more . . . on.”

Mom gave me a look. “Please! This is no time for your foolishness!”

It seemed that neither one of them was in the mood to switch to another mood.

Dad shoved his chair back hard enough to chip the paint off the wall. “There’s no point in rehashing our budget right this second,” he roared. “The whole thing can wait till later . . . when we’re alone. So just drop it!”

Well, isn’t that just dandy! Now they’ve got themselves caught up in a math problem all their own, and it looks like mine’s gonna have to wait.