But then her father got transferred and they moved. All the way to California. She wrote me four letters. I answered the first one and it took me forever to think of enough things to write to fill a page, even writing large. Then I didn’t answer the next three letters and I guess she took the hint. She doesn’t even have my new address since we moved. I guess if she wrote to the old one they would forward it.
Linda called her parents Jack and Rita. She said that was what they taught her to do. She called them that from the time she was a little kid, which is weird to imagine, a little kid calling out, “Hi, Jack! Hi, Rita!”
If I called Roberta Roberta I think she would shit. I don’t know what David would do. Needless to say I have never called either of them by name, or even referred to them by name to other kids. I suppose I would to Erskine if we got to know each other well.
So far I only call them David and Roberta in my mind. And nobody knows what’s in my mind.
Sometimes I don’t even know—
Back to David and Roberta. I was just thinking. I don’t really call them anything. I always used to call them Mommy and Daddy. Since I am going to be officially a teenager soon I suppose I ought to switch to Mother and Father. But lately I don’t use a name of any sort when I talk to them.
Sometimes it used to bother me, calling them Mommy and Daddy. I had the feeling of being disloyal to the real mother and father I had wandering around somewhere in the world. But I never got too worked up at the thought because I had brains enough to realize it’s not terribly logical.
I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.
But what’s hysterical is Linda Goodenow with real parents she calls by their first names, and me, adopted, calling mine Mommy and Daddy.
Call me Ariel, the Adopted.
Or call me Ishmael, if you prefer.
There’s another book I didn’t finish. Moby Dick. Twenty pages in the library was enough to convince me I didn’t care all that much about whales, and what I did care about whales was that people would stop hunting them to extinction, so the last thing I wanted to read was a book about men hunting whales.
I loved that opening sentence, though. “Call me Ishmael.” It really grabs you.
Imagine being the last individual of a vanishing species. Like if you were the last whale in the universe. Except how would you know you were the last one? Although whales are supposed to be super intelligent and God only knows what they know and don’t know.
My Secret Thoughts, by Arnold the Whale.
I was just standing over at the window. It’s been raining on and off all day. I can get mournful just from the weather. You would think the funeral would have been on a day like this one instead of a good bright day with the sun shining.
Let’s think of something else.
At least it’s interesting here looking out the window. When we lived on Coteswood you could stare out the window all day and never see anything more exciting than someone mowing his lawn. Now there are always people walking around, and a lot of interesting dogs that don’t have to be on leashes.
I like this house so much better. The first day we moved in I was completely at home here. It’s big and it rambles and Roberta and David kept getting confused at the beginning. They would try to walk from the kitchen to the downstairs lavatory and wind up in the living room instead. But I never had this problem. As though I had a map of the inside of the house in my head before I ever saw the place.
A floorplan, I mean. Couldn’t think of the word.
I think that’s Roberta’s car. I’ll go look.
Yes it is.
I even knew what this house would look like before I saw it. I guess I must have heard them discussing it. But when we first came here and parked down the block I knew right away which house we were going to look at. I mean I just knew, as if I had seen a picture before and I was recognizing it.
I never mentioned this to them. I think they already figure I’m crazy so why make trouble?
She’s on the stairs now. Roberta. “Hello?” But it’s easier not to pay attention.
The stairs always creak when she climbs up or down them. They never creak when I do.
It’s funny.
I’ve got homework, arithmetic and social studies, and I just don’t feel like doing it. Of course that’s what Roberta thinks I’m doing right now.
This is great. She’s standing in the doorway of my room watching me and I’m pretending I don’t even know she’s there. She thinks I’m doing homework, writing in my spiral notebook, and I’m writing about her. This is really neat.
There. She left. Because of course she wouldn’t want to disturb me when I’m busy with my work. Just another way this book has it all over My Secret Thoughts.
Footsteps on the stairs. Creak creak creak!
Homework is boring and stupid, so of course she wouldn’t dream of interrupting it. But if she knew I was doing something that mattered to me, like what I’m writing now or like my music, then she’d make a point of cutting in.
Caleb used to love it when I played the flute for him. At least I think he did. I would go to his room and play for a long time and he just loved to listen.
Nobody else in this house does. They think I’m just fooling around.
I think Roberta’s finally beginning to get the message that I don’t want flute lessons. She says if I were to take lessons I could have a real flute. What popped into my head the first time she said that was that I don’t want a real flute, I want an adopted one. Another example of the kind of thing I think is hysterical but nobody else would.
I like my flute. It’s sort of tinny but I like the sounds it can make. It fits into the kind of music I want to play. As hard as it is to play, I don’t think you could call it a toy.
I never heard another instrument that makes just this sound.
That’s why I like it and I suppose that’s why Roberta doesn’t.
Oh, I’ll get at my homework in a few minutes. I always do. I’m always prepared and I always do well in school and get good grades. When I switched schools they were doing completely different things in some of my classes on account of being in the City of Charleston school system. I picked it all up in the middle of the term and got good marks right from the beginning without even having to kill myself doing it.
It’s how I am.
I guess I must have had intelligent parents. Even if they did manage to be stupid about one particular thing.
At least my mother decided to have me. She could have had an abortion, and then where would I be? And who would be having all these thoughts?
I wonder what she was like. I wonder about both of my parents, but I especially wonder about my mother.
I wonder if she was evil.
Four
Two of the three stove-top pilot lights were out. Roberta relit them with a wooden kitchen match, then put a copper-bottomed teakettle on to boil. She measured out instant coffee and powdered chickory root and waited impatiently for the teakettle to whistle. Her mind wandered while she waited, and when the kettle whistled the sound startled her.
Nerves, she thought. She was a nervous wreck.
Why did the pilot lights go out all the time? The damp chill air of the kitchen seemed an unsatisfactory explanation. Maybe there were air currents in the room that blew out pilot lights on a whim. Maybe there was something wrong with the old stove itself, some eccentricity in the gas line that would shut off the flow of gas long enough for the flame to die.
The gas company had sent a man to check the stove and its connections. He’d found nothing wrong, assuring Roberta that she had a great old stove. “They made this baby to last,” he told her. “You made a range like this today, nobody could afford to buy it. Your gas line’s sound and all your fittings are tight. There’s no leak anywhere.”