The Luckiest Girl Read online

  After they passed through the business district, the orange trees became more numerous and the Spanish houses with tile roofs gave way to ranch houses. “Here we are,” said Mavis suddenly, turning into a driveway beside a high privet hedge.

  Here I am, Shelley’s thought echoed as she stepped out of the station wagon and through the opening in the hedge. To her surprise she found herself facing a very old two-story clapboard house. It was painted gray with green shutters and in the center of the front door, which was beneath a vine covered with magenta blossoms, was an old-fashioned doorbell such as Shelley had not seen since she had visited a great-aunt when she was a little girl. It was a doorbell with a handle to twirl instead of a button to push. And I thought everything in California was modern, Shelley marveled.

  “Welcome to our house,” said Mavis. “I know you want to change into something cooler. You must be dreadfully warm in a suit.” She led Shelley into the house and up a flight of creaky stairs. “And here is your room. The bathroom is at the end of the hall.” Mavis smiled and patted Shelley’s shoulder. “It’s all so strange the first time away from home, isn’t it? Come on down when you have freshened up. Supper will be ready in a little while and you can meet the rest of the family then.”

  Grateful for a moment alone, Shelley sat down on the bed, which was covered with an India print spread, and looked around the long, narrow room. Because of the low, sloping ceiling, the sills of the windows were only a few inches from the floor. The windows looked out on a tangle of vines and treetops. Between the windows was a desk, painted black, and on the desk a pair of old flatirons, gilded and obviously intended to be used for bookends. At the end of the room between two closets was an old-fashioned dresser waiting for her lipstick and bobby pins. On the wall over the bed were two unframed Japanese prints. Opposite the windows were two doors that led into the hall (that was odd—two doors into the hall) and between them was her trunk, waiting to be unpacked. Shelley, who all her life had slept in a square room with one door, framed pictures, and windows a conventional distance from the floor, felt even more strongly that she had fallen down a rabbit hole into a new life.

  Quickly she slipped out of her suit and into a cotton dress that she had brought in her overnight bag in case her trunk had not arrived. She ran a comb through her hair before she walked down the hall to the bathroom, which was like no bathroom she had ever seen before. Because of its size, she guessed that it had once been a bedroom. The windows, curtained in red-and-yellow calico, looked out upon a row of eucalyptus trees and, beyond them, an orange grove. Around the bathroom were seven towel racks, each labeled with a name printed on adhesive tape—Mavis, Tom, Katie, Luke, Shelley, Mother, Guests. Whose mother? Shelley wondered as she washed her hands and dried them on a towel from her rack. The rough white towel had the words Santa Theresa Union High School printed on a green stripe down the center; and as Shelley examined the bathroom more closely she saw that all the towels were white, with the name of a school printed or stitched on them. This seemed peculiar and she felt a moment of longing for the white bathroom at home with its fluffy pink towels carefully selected to match the tile. She was relieved, though, to see the names Mavis and Tom, for that was how she thought of Mr. and Mrs. Michie. Obviously they thought of themselves that way too.

  Then, noticing the open lid of the hamper, Shelley closed it without thinking, because she had been brought up always to close drawers and cupboard doors. She was startled when this brought forth an indignant meow from inside the hamper. She lifted the lid and looked in at a small gray cat, the color of the shadow of a cat, blinking at her in annoyance from a heap of bath towels. “Oh—I’m sorry,” apologized Shelley, and left the lid open. Obviously this family cared more for the comfort of the cat than the tidiness of the bathroom. For the first time since she stepped off the plane, Shelley’s face relaxed into a smile.

  Shelley was about to leave the bathroom when a commotion below led her back to the window. A tall man in a sweatshirt was bending low over the handlebars of a bicycle as he rode along the row of eucalyptus trees and disappeared around the corner of the house. He was followed by a shouting boy and girl, also on bicycles, and a large, barking police dog. They must be Tom and Katie and Luke, Shelley realized as she listened to their laughter and shouting from the other side of the house. Californians and their outdoor living!

  Timidly Shelley left the bathroom and descended the stairs, hesitating a moment to look at the living room. It, too, was an unusually long, narrow room. There was a quaint old fireplace, and on its mantel an old walnut clock with a cupid painted on the glass was ticking. On either side of the fireplace bookshelves reached to the ceiling. The chairs and couches wore bright print slipcovers. At the far end of the living room was a pair of doors, each topped by a glass transom. From the other side of these doors Shelley heard the rattle of dishes. The least she could do was offer to set the table, so she walked the length of the living room and tried one of the doors. It was locked.

  “Come around through the dining room, Shelley,” Mavis called through the door.

  Shelley walked through the dining room (no one she knew at home had linoleum and painted furniture in the dining room) and into the kitchen, where she found Mavis shredding salad greens into a wooden bowl. “Shelley, would you mind doing this while I put the fake Stroganoff together?” she asked. “The rice is already cooking.”

  “I’d be glad to,” said Shelley, wondering what fake Stroganoff could be. If things were reversed and someone had come to Shelley’s home from California, her mother would have had a special dinner with fried chicken, homemade rolls, and angel food cake with orange icing, all of them genuine, none of them fake.

  Outside, the trio on bicycles and the barking dog tore past.

  “Anything to amuse the dog,” observed Mavis. “They’ll all be in shortly and you can meet them.”

  Shelley felt a little hurt by the casualness of this family toward herself, a guest who had traveled so far. At her own home she would not have been allowed to ride around the house on a bicycle when a guest had arrived. She must remember she was a stranger in a foreign land, she told herself sternly, and she must accept the customs of the natives. They were probably right—after all, she was to be a member of the family for the winter and there was no reason why she should be treated like company.

  “I’d better explain about those doors that don’t open,” Mavis said, as she sliced onions into melted butter in an earthenware casserole. “You see, this house was once a boardinghouse in the center of town. When it was to be torn down to make way for a filling station, Tom had a chance to buy it for practically nothing. We had it moved up here and knocked out a lot of partitions—the rooms had been very small—and that is why we have so many long, narrow rooms and why you have two doors in your bedroom. We didn’t know what to do about those doors at the end of the living room, so we just left them where they were. We can’t open them, because we have the refrigerator against one and some cupboards against the other.”

  “It—it’s very nice,” said Shelley, aware that nice was not the word she wanted to use. She did not know the exact word to describe it—shabby and comfortable and like no house she had ever seen before. No one at home lived in a converted boardinghouse. No one at home left the hamper open for the convenience of the cat.

  Mavis took three packages of frozen sirloin tips out of the refrigerator, tore them open, and added their contents to the onion and butter in the casserole, which she put into the oven. “There,” she said. “Now all I have to do is add sour cream at the last minute.”

  The back door opened and the rest of the family burst into the kitchen. “Well, look who’s arrived!” Tom exclaimed, and gave Shelley a hearty hug before he held her off to look at her. “Shelley, it’s good to have you here!”

  “Hello, Shelley,” said Luke, with a smile that was shy but friendly.

  “Hi,” said Katie, taking in Shelley’s shoes and dress and hair.

  S
o this was the girl for whom she was to be a good experience. Uncomfortable under her scrutiny, Shelley managed to smile, uncertain what to say to three strangers at the same time. They all looked tan and healthy and there was a look of the out-of-doors about them. Tom and Luke she liked at once, because she felt they liked her, but Katie she was not so sure about. Perhaps this sturdy thirteen-year-old was not pleased to have another girl in the house being a good experience for her.

  “Go on, all of you, and wash up for supper,” ordered Mavis. “It’s such a warm day we’ll eat out under the pergola.”

  Pergola was such an old-fashioned word. Shelley had thought everyone in California had a patio.

  “Katie, you slice the French bread and carry it out to the table,” directed Mavis.

  As she opened the bread box, Katie heaved a noisy, exhausted sigh, as if slicing bread were a terrible chore.

  “It’s just a phase,” said Mavis grimly.

  “Mommy, do you have to go around saying everything I do is just a phase all the time?” asked Katie.

  Mavis laughed. “I certainly hope it is just a phase,” she said. “I would hate to think that some of your behavior was permanent.”

  Katie picked a leaf of curly chicory out of the salad, held it up beside her face as if it were a lock of hair, and remarked, “I wish I had curly hair.”

  Mavis stirred sour cream into the bubbling casserole before she ladled the Stroganoff over rice. The meal was served on trays, and Shelley noticed that there was a fresh cloth napkin on each tray. She would have expected such a casual family to use paper napkins.

  The Michies carried their trays out through the dining room to a table under the pergola, which Shelley saw was a sort of arbor supported by pillars and covered with vines. As she joined the family at the long table, she was aware of a lovely fragrance. “Why, there are lemons growing on that tree and blossoms, too!” she exclaimed when she had discovered the source of the fragrance. Real lemons growing in the garden!

  Everyone laughed. “Haven’t you ever seen lemons before?” asked Katie.

  “Not growing,” answered Shelley. “Why, there are green lemons and ripe lemons and blossoms on the tree all at the same time!” Nature in California must be in a state of utter confusion to produce such a tree as this.

  While the others were discussing lemons, Katie left the table and walked across the yard to a tree with a gnarled trunk and slender gray foliage. She picked something, which she laid on the table in front of Shelley. “We have olives growing in the yard, too,” she said.

  “Fresh olives right off the tree!” marveled Shelley. How kind of Katie to offer her one. “I simply adore olives.”

  “Oh, Shelley—” began Mavis.

  It was too late. Shelley bit eagerly into the olive. The taste was so bitter and so terrible that she could not believe it. She sat shocked, not knowing what to do.

  Katie went into a fit of giggles.

  “Oh, Shelley, I am so sorry,” said Mavis. “I tried to warn you.”

  Shelley swallowed and gulped from her water glass while Katie continued to giggle.

  Then Tom spoke. “Katie, that was not a nice thing to do. I think you should apologize to Shelley.”

  Katie tried to look repentant but did not succeed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, giggling, “but you looked so surprised when you bit into the olive.”

  Shelley was so embarrassed she did not know how to answer. Apparently Katie had made her the victim of a practical joke. And just when she was beginning to feel at ease, too.

  “All olives are bitter until they have been cured,” Tom explained. “Katie was counting on your not knowing that.”

  “She certainly caught me,” said Shelley, managing to smile to show she was a good sport, even though she did not feel like one. If this was part of Katie’s difficult age, she did not like to think what the rest of the winter could be like. “It tasted so awful I don’t see how anyone ever thought of eating them in the first place.”

  “You know, that is exactly what I have always wondered,” said Katie, smiling warmly at Shelley for the first time, as if now they had something in common. “Well, I guess I had better go do my practicing.”

  “Mother, she’s just trying to get out of the dishes,” protested Luke. “She always gets out of the dishes.”

  “I have to practice, don’t I?” asked Katie virtuously as she rose from the table.

  “Yes, you do,” agreed Mavis, “but that doesn’t mean you get out of the dishes.”

  Katie heaved a sigh that showed she was exhausted, abused, and misunderstood by her family. Then she disappeared into the house, and chords crashed out of the piano in the living room.

  When Katie settled down to play, Shelley thought she played surprisingly well for a girl of thirteen. The music she recognized as Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody, but while she listened, the rhapsody turned suddenly and logically into Pop Goes the Weasel.

  “Katie!” yelled Tom in a voice that would have carried across a gymnasium full of shouting boys.

  The music stopped. “But Daddy,” protested Katie. “It fits there. See, the music goes like this”—she demonstrated with a few notes—“and then it just naturally wants to turn into Pop Goes the Weasel. Like this.”

  “You stick to the notes as they are written,” ordered Tom.

  Mavis sighed. “She has talent, but she simply doesn’t care.”

  Katie finished playing Pop Goes the Weasel. The rest of the family continued to sit under the pergola while darkness fell.

  Shelley peered at her watch. “It is getting dark awfully early,” she observed.

  “That’s because you are farther south. A thousand miles makes a big difference in the time darkness falls,” Tom explained.

  Why, I knew that, Shelley thought suddenly, but the information had never seemed real before, any more than igloos or the international date line or a lot of other things in schoolbooks seemed real. Until now this had been a fact to be learned, stored away, and pulled out again to be put down on a test paper if that question happened to be asked. Now she had really traveled, had seen before her eyes the things she had learned about in school.

  Suddenly Tom rose to his feet. “There’s a full moon,” he announced. “Let’s do the washing.”

  For a moment Shelley thought she must have misunderstood, but Mavis said matter-of-factly, “That’s a wonderful idea. I’ll gather up the laundry.”

  Shelley was not sure how she should react, so she offered to wash the dishes. Willing dishwashers, she knew, were always welcome. When in doubt, wash the dishes should be a good rule to follow when living in a strange household.

  The Michies carried their trays into the kitchen, where Shelley began to scrape and stack the plates. From the sink she could look into the laundry, a room with a sloping roof that looked as if it had been added to the house as an afterthought. The room was equipped with an automatic washing machine, a pair of laundry tubs, an old washing machine with a wringer, two ironing boards, and a mangle so large it must have belonged to a professional laundry at one time. On the wall over the mangle was the mounted head of a deer with several old hats hung jauntily on its antlers.

  While Shelley washed and wiped the dishes, Mavis sorted piles of towels, sheets, and clothing. Luke loaded the automatic washer while Tom put colored clothing through the second washing machine. They all appeared to be enjoying themselves. From the living room came the first notes of the rhapsody.

  “Katie’s starting that piece again just to get out of helping,” remarked Luke.

  Beneath her feet Shelley could feel the old house shake from the vibration of the automatic washer. A frightened mouse ran out from under a cupboard and stared at Shelley, with its whiskers quivering, before it disappeared under the refrigerator. Shelley, who had never lived in a house with mice before, did not feel surprised. A little gray mouse seemed a perfectly natural member of this household.

  When Shelley had wrung out the dishcl
oth and hung it over the faucet, she went into the laundry. “May I help?” she asked.

  “You’re just in time,” answered Tom, piling clean wet clothes into a clothes basket on a child’s wagon. “You and Luke can start hanging these out.”

  Luke pulled the wagon out into the backyard under the clotheslines. Shelley followed, thinking how strange it was to be living in the same house with a boy so near her own age and how much stranger to be hanging out laundry with him. She picked up a clothespin and began to pin a towel to the line. The moonlight, even filtered through the eucalyptus trees, was so bright that she could read the words Vincente Junior College printed in a green stripe down the center of the towel. The eucalyptus trees gave off a medicinal odor something like cough drops, which mingled with the sweetness of the lemon blossoms.

  “I understand you are working on a motorcycle,” said Shelley, wanting to start a conversation with this quiet boy.

  “Yes.” Luke sounded pleased at her interest. “It keeps me broke buying parts, but I think I can get it running sometime.”

  “Won’t it worry your mother to have you riding around on a motorcycle?” Shelley asked.

  “I guess so.” Luke sounded discouraged, as if he had been losing an argument for a long time.

  Shelley wished she had not mentioned his mother.

  Tom, followed by Mavis, carried out a second basket of laundry, which they began to hang. Shelley, who had a towel with St. Joseph’s High School stitched in one corner, remarked, “You certainly have a lot of towels.”

  Mavis laughed. “I suppose our towels look odd to you. You see, visiting teams playing at the high school bring their own towels with them and they usually leave one or two behind. Tom started bringing them home when he discovered the janitors only threw them away. Tom never wants anything to be wasted.”