#20 Read online

  #20

  By Nancy Springer

  Copyright 2012 by Nancy Springer

  Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1990.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  #20

  By Nancy Springer

  There’s a big lilac bush growing by Mrs. Life’s porch, and I used to hide in the hollow under the leaves like big green hearts, between the bush and the cinder-block porch pillars, to play that I was Pony Queen of the Universe or just to get away from the neighborhood awhile. But I don’t go there anymore, because I’m going to die on account of what I heard there.

  Not that old Mrs. Life was not a nice lady. She sat on her porch all day every day from April to October, and she spoke to me like a friend every time I passed. “Veronica” she called me, because she said “Ronni” was a boy’s name. Most people as old as her don’t seem to like kids much, but Mrs. Life would invite me up on her porch to sit by her and talk and see what she was doing. Sometimes she was crocheting an afghan, and she would say to me, “I’ve put in a hundred and ten hours on this one so far.” She would say, “I’ve crocheted sixty-six afghans since 1987.” And she would show me her notebook. She had a little spiral-bound notebook like they sell in drugstores, and she had marked in it everything she had crocheted since she had learned how to crochet, and how many ounces of yarn each thing took, and what colors, and how much the yarn cost, and how many hours it took her to make it, and who she gave it to when she was done.

  Or sometimes she was reading a book, one of those real fat paperbacks about the Civil War or something, and she would say to me, “I’m on page five hundred and forty-seven.” She would say, “I read twenty-two books last year. I have read a total of one thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine books in my adult life. Eleven more and I’ll be up to two thousand.” And she had a notebook for keeping track of all that, too. She had been a schoolteacher way back when my mom and dad were in school, so maybe that was why she had those notebooks and kept track of everything in very, very tidy thin handwriting. Her handwriting made me shiver like having a fishhook caught in me.

  She lived right in the middle of town, next to the church, across from the tavern. From up on her porch a person could see practically the whole town, because Pleasantville isn’t very big. You could see all the important places, anyway: the Post Office, and the schoolyard, and the drugstore, and the house next to the tavern that my folks called the cathouse, I could never figure out why. They don’t have any cats over there as far as I can tell. Sometimes I hung around in the alley behind the cathouse watching the windows, because I like cats, kittens especially. There’s different girls and ladies who live there, and I never saw any cats at all, but I did see interesting things happening, things to give me ideas what it might be like when I was a woman. I guess that’s why I kept going back even after I gave up on the kittens.

  Anyway, everybody in Pleasantville went past Mrs. Life’s porch to get to those places, and they all knew her, and most of them had had her as a teacher in school. And they all liked her, or at least seemed to. They all stopped to talk with her or at least said hi. So I knew she must be a nice lady.

  Sometimes I didn’t want to talk with her, though. Sometimes I just didn’t want to be with anybody, like, I was wondering whether I was really part of my family or maybe I was adopted, and times like that I would hide under the lilac bush beside her porch and play that I was Double Dutch Jump Rope Master of the Galaxy, and that was how it happened that I heard her arguing with Mr. Quickel.

  It was pretty early in spring yet, and the blossoms were still on the lilac, and it smelled sweeter than a Church Ladies’ Auxiliary under there, so I stayed longer than usual. At least I think that was the day it was, because lilac time is when people start mowing their lawns, and Mrs. Life was arguing with Mr. Quickel about what he was going to charge her to do hers again this year.

  “Thirty dollars a week,” he said. “Now you know that includes everything.” She had a big lawn with lots of shrubs and stuff that had to be kept after.

  “Why thirty? Last year you charged me fifteen.”

  “No, last year I charged you twenty-five. But the cost of everything has gone up, gasoline for the mower—”

  ”Last year you charged me fifteen.”

  Mr. Quickel was one of those people who had had Mrs. Life in school, and now he was a schoolteacher himself. My big brother, Greg, had him for Health and Wrestling in middle school, and after going to a few wrestling matches I kind of got a crush on Coach Quickel because he was really good-looking for an old guy, I mean, my father’s age. Besides which, he went to our church and everybody liked him. He mowed grass in the summertime because, my mom said, the school board didn’t pay him enough. My mom said it was a disgrace to see a schoolteacher moonlighting. I had heard Greg and a couple of his friends talking about mooning a tour bus one night, and I wondered if it was the same as what Mr. Quickel did.

  Mrs. Life said, “The cost of gas? That’s no excuse for charging me double what you did last year.”

  “You’re thinking of three years ago I charged you fifteen, not last year.” Mr. Quickel put on a teacher tone like he was trying to joke with a kid who was being dense. “The years sure do pile up, don’t they? Close to eighty of them, right? That’s a lot of data to sort through. It’s no wonder if you’re starting to get a little short-minded—”

  ”Nicholas Quickel.” Mrs. Life’s voice went low and cold, so I knew Mr. Quickel had made a mistake. A bad one.

  He knew it too. “I didn’t mean any offense, Mrs. Life.” Even though he had gray hair himself, Mr. Quickel called her Mrs. Life instead of Savilla the way some of the really old people did. “I just thought…my tax records show…never mind. Look, I can still do your lawn for twenty-five—”

  Mrs. Life said, “I will get someone else.”

  “That’s fine. No offense meant and none taken, all right?”

  She didn’t answer. I heard him walk away.

  He should have known better than to think Mrs. Life was short-minded, the way she kept track of everything. I guess if she put a nickel in a Salvation Army kettle she went home and marked it down. All year long she kept track of her grocery coupons in a little notebook and every December 31st she added it up so she’d know how much she had saved. My mom said coupons and afghans and books and stuff weren’t the only things she kept track of. Every time my big sister, Regina, was out on a date, Mom said, old Mrs. Life watched from behind the big potted plant in her side window to see how late Gina came in. I guess Mrs. Life sat there taking notes on the boys and how many times Regina kissed each one.

  The same day she argued with Mr. Quickel, Mrs. Life called and got my brother Greg to mow her lawn for ten dollars a week. When he hung up the phone I told him he could have got fifteen, so the next day he made me come along and help him rake. Mrs. Life watched him hard at first to make sure he didn’t step in her flowerbeds, but after a while s
he went back to sitting on her porch. Another old lady, Mrs. Simmermeyer, stopped to talk, and I was raking the side yard so I heard them. They started with the preacher (they didn’t like that he wore gray slacks instead of black), then went through the town practically person by person.

  “I was just thinking last night about somebody I haven’t thought of in years,” Mrs. Life said after a while.

  “Oh?” The other lady was happy to hear this. “Who might that be?”

  “The Klunk boy. You remember little Charlie Klunk? Whatever became of him?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” Mrs. Simmermeyer was in heaven. “He came home on early discharge from the Service, remember, and then he moved to California. And the Klunks all said he had married a nice girl and had two nice children. But then along about 1983—I think it was ’83—maybe it was ’82—”

  Mrs. Life would’ve known whether it was ’83 or ’82. She knew what year people were born or graduated or married or died. Anyway, I knew she knew what year Charlie Klunk did what he did, because I had heard her tell this whole story to somebody else the summer before. But there she was sitting and listening to Mrs. Simmermeyer tell it and not even correcting her.

  Mrs. Simmermeyer got back on track. “Anyway, he went and joined one of them Gay Liberation clubs. Came out of the closet. Here he was light in his loafers all along and none of us knew it.”

  “I knew it,” Mrs. Life said, real calm. “I could tell he was a sissy. I had him in school, remember? And I could always tell which boys to watch. But what’s he doing now?”

  “He lives with his sweetie. You know, his boyfriend. They run a flower shop together.” Mrs. Simmermeyer laughed, but Mrs. Life just sort of nodded.

  “He and Nicholas Quickel were in the same class, weren’t they? And didn’t they used to run around together a lot?”

  “Did they? I don’t remember.”

  “Well, I had them both in class, and it seems to me they were very close.”

  I turned around and raked the other way so I could watch. There they sat with their heads together, their saggy old bosoms almost touching, and Mrs. Simmermeyer’s baggy old eyes had opened wide. But Mrs. Life just said as if it was the weather she was talking about, “Nick Quickel was over here yesterday evening, was what made me think of Charlie Klunk. I wonder if they still keep in touch.”

  “Nicky Quickel. Isn’t he the wrestling coach now?”

  “Yes. Junior High. Last I heard.”

  They talked some more, and then Mrs. Simmermeyer went off about her business. Mrs. Life sat rocking on her porch in her wicker rocker, and after I had raked a while longer, I went up and sat with her. I was kind of hoping she would have some sort of chore for me, because Greg wasn’t giving me anything for raking grass except just letting me live. Sometimes Mrs. Life sent me across to the Post Office with a letter or across to the drugstore to buy her a magazine, and even if it was just a dinky little errand she always paid me at least a half-dollar. Like I said, she was a real nice lady.

  But she didn’t send me on any errand that day. We just watched the cars and stuff go by. When a tour bus went past, Mrs. Life said, “That’s the sixth one today.”

  The reason the tour buses go through is Pleasantville sits along the river halfway between the Indian Rock Carvings upstream and the Indian Echoes Cavern downstream. And right outside town is the Indian Maiden’s Leap. There’s this high cliff above the river, and some Indian girl whose loverboy got tomahawked was supposed to have killed herself by jumping off it. What they don’t tell the tourists is that people still kill themselves by jumping off there. Our town is supposed to have the highest suicide rate in practically the whole country, and nobody can figure out why. It was in the paper last year, and my mom and dad talked about it for a week, how so many people in Pleasantville kill themselves when it’s supposed to be a nice place to live, old-fashioned values, not a lot of drugs, all that. Of course, not all the people who killed themselves used the Leap. Some of them took pills or shot themselves or whatever. My one girlfriend’s grandpap killed himself with a hunting rifle last winter, and he blew his head apart so good that nobody could go in the room afterward. They had to pay a cleaning service nine hundred dollars to get rid of the mess, all the little bits of ear and nose and eyeball and stuff. You would think he could have done it outside the house.

  “Those tour buses smell terrible, don’t they?” Mrs. Life said to me.

  I went back to raking, and more people stopped to talk with Mrs. Life, and maybe she asked them what ever happened to Charlie Klunk and wondered whether Nick Quickel still kept in touch. But I don’t know. Usually I listen, because I learn a lot about different people and what it’s like to be grown up. But that day I felt like I’d heard enough.

  About a week later, Mr. Quickel came by my house one evening. We were all sitting out on the lawn in the dusk, watching the lightning bugs, and he came and sat with us. He and Mom and Dad had been friends since way back, because of church. After a while Dad gave me money and sent me across the street to the drugstore to get myself a candy bar. This meant that the adults were going to talk about something they didn’t want me to hear. So after I came back with my Snickers, I went up to my room. But my windows were open, so I could hear some of what they said. Something about rumors all over town.

  “You can’t fight gossip,” Mom said. “If you try, it just makes it worse. All you can do is ignore it.”

  “Talk about getting screwed from behind,” Mr. Quickel said like he was trying to joke, and they all laughed a little.

  By the time school was out for the summer, even us kids had heard that Mr. Quickel was gay. Everybody knew it. And everybody knew gay people couldn’t be trusted around children. People whose boys had had Mr. Quickel as a coach were worried. I noticed that even my parents went into Greg’s bedroom one evening and asked him questions.

  “But Nick has a wife, and grown children,” a woman said to Mrs. Life over the porch railing. I was under the lilac bush, playing Princess of California. I’d been spending a lot of time under there lately, to get away.

  “Now, I’ve never said that Nick Quickel is a homosexual,” said Mrs. Life. “But I will say this: I have read that a fair number of men who are homosexuals can appear normal.”

  The woman was a school board member who wanted Mrs. Life’s advice. It seemed the school board had been getting letters from people who had heard things about Mr. Quickel. “But nobody seems to have any proof,” the woman said. “What if it’s all just a bunch of hooey? The man’s life is half ruined already. If we start a formal investigation—”

  Mrs. Life said, “It seems to me as a concerned citizen that we have to think of the children first. People know when they go into teaching that there are certain professional standards they have to uphold. They know we can’t go taking chances when it comes to the safety of the children.”

  “Then you think he’ll understand that we have to do what we have to do?”

  “I’ve known Nick Quickel for years, and I still think you have to do it, whether he understands or not.”

  That was the year Greg had the paper route. About midafternoon every day, a green van would come and a man would thunk bundles of the Pleasant Day on the sidewalk in front of our house. I usually helped Greg because I knew what he’d do to me if I didn’t. We’d make our fingers sore tearing open the plastic straps because we were too lazy to go inside and find the scissors. Then we’d sit and rubber-band the papers and stuff them in the bags. The newsprint blackened our hands and gave off a sickening smell, and the bags were so heavy they hauled our shoulders down. Dragging a cross couldn’t have been much worse, and the black stain of the news got on the bags, our clothes, our faces.

  Mrs. Life was always on her porch waiting for her newspaper. If we were even a few minutes late, she would fuss. “I’ve taken the Pleasant Day for sixty-two years,” she would say. “Never missed once and I don’t want to start now.” But one day Greg and I were a good ten minutes late yet
she didn’t say anything, just grabbed the paper and clawed at the rubber band with her crooked old hands. I saw her scan the headlines, then smile. And I wanted to hide in green lilac shadow, because I knew why she was smiling. Greg and I had both seen it: Pleasantville Teacher Suspect. The school board had hired a psychiatrist and a private detective to give them reports on Mr. Quickel.

  I waited until we were around the corner from Mrs. Life’s place, trudging along under our loads, before I said to Greg, “He never did anything to you, did he?”

  “Course not. The whole thing makes me sick.”

  “Me too.”

  “Get used to it, Ronni. That’s the way the world is. Sick.”

  Which was what I was trying to do: get used to it. See how things ran. Watch the people who knew. Learn the rules. Now it’s too late, I can see what was going wrong. But at the time, I couldn’t get a handle on things. I hadn’t seen anybody hurt anybody. I hadn’t even heard anybody tell any lies. I just had a rotten feeling things weren’t fair, that’s all. Just a sick feeling.

  Maybe a week after the newspaper article, me and Mom were walking to somebody’s yard sale when Mrs. Life called hello to us and beckoned Mom over to her porch.

  “Have you noticed Nicholas Quickel hasn’t been to church for three weeks now?” she said. She went to the same church we did, the one right next to her house. Practically everybody in Pleasantville went to that church. “Marjorie has been coming but he hasn’t.” His wife, Mrs. Life meant. “I wonder if they’re having problems.”

  My mother said, “Um.” Just barely polite.

  “I’m concerned about them,” Mrs. Life said, chilly. “I think we ought to pray for them.”

  “Sure. And we also ought to let them alone,” Mom said. She told Mrs. Life we had to get going. After we were down the street a ways she started to mutter, “Concerned. Huh. Concerned just like a fox when there’s a chicken in trouble.”

  A few days later, I heard Mrs. Simmermeyer telling the lady at the Post Office how Mr. Quickel and his wife were having bad problems, and no wonder, what with his being a queer and all.