She said in a rather shaky voice, “Am I your little girl?”
“That’s an odd question. Whose else would you be?”
“Howard and Virginia’s.”
He frowned slightly. “Where’d you pick up this idea of calling adults by their first names?”
“All the other kids do it.”
“Well, you don’t happen to be all the other kids. You’re my special gal.” He added casually, “Were you over at the Arlingtons’ today?”
“No.”
“You seem to be doing a lot of thinking about them.”
“I was wondering why they don’t have children of their own.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go on wondering,” he said. “It’s not the kind of question people like being asked.”
“They could buy some of their own, couldn’t they? They have lots of money. I heard Ellen say—”
“Your mother.”
“—my mother say that if she had a fraction of Virginia’s money, she’d join a health club and get rid of some of that fat Virginia carries around. Do you think Virginia’s too fat? Howard doesn’t. He likes to kiss her, he kisses her all the time when he’s not mad at her. Boy, he was mad at her last night, he—”
“All right, that’s enough,” Dave said brusquely. “I don’t want to hear any gossip about the Arlingtons from a nine-year-old.”
“It’s not gossip. It really happened. I wanted to tell you about the twenty dollars he—”
“I don’t want to listen, is that clear? Their private life isn’t my business or yours. Now you’d better settle down and go to sleep before your mother comes charging in here and shows you how mad someone can really get.”
“I’m not afraid of her. She never does anything.”
“Well, I might do something, kiddo, so watch it. No more drinks of water, no more tucking in, and no more gossip. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Lie down and I’ll turn out your light”
“I haven’t said my prayers.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sa— O.K. O.K., say your prayers.”
She closed her eyes and folded her hands.
“Amen. I don’t really think it’s been such a lovely day,” she added candidly. “But that’s in the prayer so I have to say it. I hope God won’t consider me a liar.”
“I hope not,” her father said. His hand moved toward the light switch but he didn’t turn it off. Instead, ‘‘What was the matter with your day, Jessie?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as?”
“I was treated just like a child. Mike even went to the school with me and Mary Martha to make sure I didn’t play on the jungle gym because of my hands. He acted real mean. I’m thinking of divorcing him.”
“Then you’d better think again,” Dave said. “You can’t divorce a brother or any blood relative.”
“Mary Martha did. She divorced Sheridan.”
“That’s silly.”
“Well, she never ever sees him, so it’s practically the same thing as divorce.”
“Why doesn’t she ever see him?”
Jessie looked carefully around the room as if she were checking for spies. “Can you keep a secret even from Ellen?”
Although he smiled, the question seemed to annoy him. “It may be difficult but I could try.”
“Cross your heart.”
“Consider it crossed.”
“Sheridan went to live with another woman,” Jessie whispered, “so he can’t see Mary Martha ever again. Not ever in his whole life.”
“That seems a little unreasonable to me.”
“Oh no. She’s a very bad woman, Mary Martha told me this morning. She looked up a certain word in the dictionary. It took her a long time because she didn’t know how to spell it but she figured it out.”
“She figured it out,” Dave repeated. “Yes, that’s Mary Martha all right.”
“Naturally. She’s the best speller in the school.”
“And you, my little friend, are about to become the best gossip.”
“Why is it gossip if I’m only telling the truth?”
“You don’t know it’s the truth, for one thing.” He paused, rubbing the side of his neck as if the muscles there had stiffened and turned painful. “The woman involved might not be so bad. Certainly Mrs. Oakley’s opinion of her is bound to be biased.” He paused again. “How on earth I get dragged into discussions like this, I don’t know. Now you settle down and close your eyes and start thinking about your own affairs for a change.”
She lay back on the pillow but her eyes wouldn’t close. They were fixed on Dave’s face as if she were trying to memorize it. “If you and Ellen got divorced, would I ever see you again?”
“Of course you would,” he said roughly and turned out the light. “I want no more nonsense out of you tonight, do you hear? And kindly refer to your mother as your mother. This first-name business is going to be nipped in the bud.”
“I wish the morning would hurry up and come.”
“Stop wishing and start sleeping and it will.”
“I hate the night, I just hate it.” She struck the side of the pillow with her fist. “Nothing to do but just lie here and sleep. When I’m sleeping I don’t feel like me, myself.”
“You’re not supposed to feel like anything when you’re sleeping.”
“I mean, when I’m sleeping and wake up real suddenly, I don’t feel like me. It’s different with you. When you wake up and turn on the light, you see Ellen in the other bed and you think, that’s Ellen over there so I must be Dave. You know right away you’re Dave.”
“Do I?” His voice was grave and he didn’t rebuke her for using first names. “Suppose I woke up and Ellen wasn’t in the other bed?”
“Then you’d know she was just in the kitchen getting a snack or making a cup of tea. Ellen’s always around some place. I never worry about her.”
“That sounds as if you worry about me, Jess. Do you?”
“I guess not.”
“But you’re not sure?”
She put one hand over her eyes to shade them from the hall light coming through the door. “Well, fathers are different. They can just move out, like Sheridan, and you never see them anymore.”
“That’s nonsense,” he said sharply. “The Oakley case is a very special one.”
“Mary Martha says it always happens the same way.”
“If it makes Mary Martha feel better to believe that, let her. But you don’t have to.” He leaned over and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “I’ll always be around, see? In fact, I’ll be around for such a long time that you’ll get mighty sick of me eventually.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Wait until the young men start calling on you and you want the living room to entertain them in. You’ll be wishing dear old Dad would take a one-way trip to the moon.”
She let out a faint sound which he interpreted as a giggle.
“There now,” he added. “You’re feeling better, aren’t you? No more worrying about me and no more thinking about the Oakleys. They’re in a class by themselves.”
“No, there are others.”
“Now what do you mean by that, if anything? Or are you just trying to prolong the conversation by dreaming up—”
“No. I heard with my own ears.”
“Heard what?”
“You might call it gossip if I tell you.”
“I might. Try me.”
She spoke in a whisper as if the Arlingtons might be listening at the window. “Howard is moving out, exactly the way Sheridan did. He told Virginia last night, right in front of me. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, and then he stomped away.”