Libby on Wednesday (21 page)

She had to stop for a while then, until her hand stopped shaking, so it was several minutes before she went on.

Everyone is talking about it at school, and some of it has been in the paper. G.G.’s father was taken away to jail and then to a special hospital for alcoholics. There was an interview with him in last night’s paper. He said, in the interview,
that he was terribly sorry about what happened and that he plans to stay at the sanatorium until his alcohol problem is cured forever. I hope he means it
.

Elliott thinks he means it and so does Gillian, but Cordelia doesn’t. Cordelia says drunkards always say they’re quitting, and she thinks Tony Greene ought to be put in prison for life. Gillian and Cordelia argued about it for quite a long time
.

Libby had begun to write about Gillian and Cornelia’s argument and how it related to what happened to G.G., but she’d only completed a line or two when she heard Gillian calling to say that Wendy was on the telephone—Wendy usually called several times a day on weekends. So Libby put the journal away, thinking she would have to find some time later on to finish writing about what had happened that terrible Wednesday afternoon.

But then there was a shopping trip with Gillian and Cordelia, and in the afternoon Tierney came over to play billiards, and it was quite late at night before she had a chance to write again. It was dark by then, so she only stayed in the Treehouse long enough to get the green notebook out of its hiding place in the settee. Back in her room she crawled into bed, opened Graham’s safari writing desk, and got out a pen.

There was some unfinished business. What she fully intended to do was to continue writing about G.G., but then something caught her eye—Mercedes’ latest letter, still lying where she had dropped it on her dresser. And suddenly, without even deciding to, she began to write something entirely
different—the first letter she had written to Mercedes in a long, long time.

Dear Mercedes
,

I’m sorry that it’s been so long since I’ve written but …

She thought for perhaps as much as five or ten minutes before she went on.

 … I’ve been angry at you because I blamed you for making me go to Morrison Middle School, and I HATED it. At least I did for a long time
.

It turned out to be one of the longest letters Libby had ever written. She began by telling about how terrible Morrison Middle School had been at first and how she had lied to everyone so that she would be allowed to quit as soon as the school year was over. She told about the beginning of the writers’ workshop and how frightened she had been about it, and how it had turned out to be so different from what she’d expected.

She also wrote about what happened to G.G., but only briefly, because she knew that Gillian and Christopher had already written to tell Mercedes all about it.

The last paragraph went …

So now the school year is almost over, and I really kind of want to go on going to Morrison next year. And I guess you would say that that’s because your plan worked and I’ve been
SOCIALIZED
. Right? No! Wrong! I actually haven’t made much progress at all at being socialized. I still get tense and
jittery if I have to say anything in class, and I usually can’t talk to people I don’t know without being very nervous and making an idiot of myself. So I’m a long way from being really socialized. The only reason that I want to go on going to Morrison next year is that there are some people there that I like and some others that I am curious about and …

She stopped again and sat staring at what she had written. Staring and thinking and wondering—until her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of her cuckoo clock counting off the hours—it was eleven o’clock. And the next day was a school day.

So the letter ended right there, in mid-sentence.

 … some people there that I like and some others that I am curious about and …

Wow! It’s eleven o’clock
.

So she didn’t get anything more written about G.G. that night, and the next day was a Monday with lots of extra homework. It was several days before she was able to write in the green notebook again, and when she finally did, she decided that that particular part of her journal—about the day they found G.G.—was as finished as it needed to be.

   20

The FFW continued to meet. Only there were just the four of them now since Gary Greene was no longer a member or even a student at Morrison Middle School. The rumor was that after he’d been released from the hospital, he’d been sent to live with some relatives in another city.

But the reduced membership wasn’t the only change. For one thing, there had been a definite decrease in what Mizzo would have called nonconstructive-type activity. They’d all noticed it—a whole different feeling at the workshop meetings. Everyone had commented on it from time to time, particularly Alex. And Alex himself was one of the things that had changed the most.

In the last few weeks, during what Alex called the “post-G.G. era,” he seemed much less nervous and twitchy, and he did a lot more talking during the workshop sessions. As Tierney said, Alex Lockwood might not be very well coordinated in some ways, but there certainly wasn’t anything wrong with his brain-mouth connection. Sometimes the rest of them complained about the amount of time Alex
used up commenting and critiquing, as well as just running off at the mouth in general, but at the same time they all agreed that everything he had to say was interesting or funny, or both.

After a while they started calling him Alexander the Great—Libby started it actually—and pretty soon they were all doing it. “Here comes Alexander the Great,” they would say, or “Alex the Great,” and after a while just “The Great.” And it was pretty obvious that “The Great” liked his new nickname, as well as all the extra attention he was getting.

In early May the workshop received a letter from Mizzo addressed to the FFW at 1177 Windward, and the return address was Morrison instead of San Francisco. Mizzo was out of the hospital but she wouldn’t be coming back to school for two or three more weeks, so the time and place continued to be after school on Wednesdays at the McCall House. Usually they held the workshop in the Treehouse, but once, in cold, rainy weather, they met in the Great Hall in front of the fire. And always, after the workshop was over, there would be refreshments in the kitchen, and usually the family would be there too.

By now the workshop members and the family were well acquainted. Too well acquainted, Libby sometimes thought. In the kitchen after the workshop meeting it sometimes seemed that Gillian and Cordelia, and now and then Elliott, were doing most of the talking, telling old “famous people I have known” or “exotic places I have traveled” stories. Stories that Libby had heard dozens of times but that Tierney and Wendy and Alex, for some reason, seemed to find fascinating.

Gillian was perhaps the biggest favorite. Tierney and Wendy loved to get her talking about her life in Paris. And Alex had discovered about Gillian and Cordelia and politics, and he liked to bring up political subjects and then just sit back, grinning, and enjoy the fireworks. Subjects like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Libby tried to tell him that mentioning subjects like FDR in front of Gillian and Cordelia was just asking for trouble, but he just smiled fiendishly and said, “Yeah, I know. Exciting, isn’t it?”

Sometimes Libby actually got a little frustrated—like when she had something important to say and no one was listening. It was rather ironical really—the fact that she’d worried so much about what the FFW would think of the family and now she sometimes wished they liked each other a little less.

The workshop itself was coming along fine. Alex had started a new parody, on detective stories this time, and Tierney had given him permission to use some ideas from the one that she had written. Ideas like calling his detective Hatchet, instead of Spade or Hammer.

Wendy’s latest story, the one set in the twenties, was getting more interesting as it went along, particularly after the heroine’s rich father lost all his money in the market crash and she started having to sell all her beautiful clothing to buy food. Tierney’s critique was that Wendy should always have her characters go broke, because her stories were much faster paced when she didn’t have to describe what everyone was wearing every couple of paragraphs. To Libby’s surprise, Wendy seemed to take the remark as a compliment—but maybe that was because of the way Tierney said
it. Tierney—well, everybody really—was getting a little better at constructive criticism.

After they more or less finished the “Island Adventure” collaboration, they mailed it to Mizzo. And a few days later she mailed it back with her critique of what they had written. Of course Libby read it as soon as the letter arrived, but she decided not to tell the others and surprise them with it at the next workshop meeting.

So, on the next Wednesday, Libby was planning to start the meeting by reading Mizzo’s letter. It was a nice, warm day, and they were meeting as usual in the Treehouse. As soon as they were all seated and Wendy had marked everyone present in the roll book, Libby told them about Mizzo’s critique.

“Hey, great!” Alex said. “I’ll bet she really liked the part where the movie company shows up on the island and we all get jobs as extras.”

“Sure she did,” Tierney said sarcastically, who had never thought much of Alex’s movie-company idea. “Particularly the part where we don’t explain how come the movie guys go away in all their fancy boats and leave us still marooned on the island.”

So Alex said that was Hollywood for you, and Tierney said what did he know about Hollywood, and Libby finally had to bang on the table and yell to get them to shut up and let her start reading Mizzo’s letter.

She had just read, “It’s a riot. I laughed until my broken ribs ached”—as usual, Mizzo started out constructively by mentioning what she liked best—when suddenly Wendy said, “Hey, listen. Somebody’s coming.”

As soon as Libby stopped reading, they all could hear it,
the rusty squeak of the iron staircase as someone climbed up toward the Treehouse.

“Gillian, maybe?” Wendy asked, but Libby shook her head. None of the family ever came up to the Treehouse.

The creaking noise went around the trunk, getting closer and closer, and then someone was on the landing, pushing the door open—and then standing there in the doorway. It was G.G.

It was hard to believe. After seeing him over and over again in imagination the way he had looked that last day, on the floor of his room, it was hard to believe that he was actually standing there looking just like his normal self. His wide, blunt-looking face was just the way it had always been, and even his halfway threatening smile seemed unchanged. And as they all sat there staring, speechless with surprise, the smile widened.

“Hey, you lucky people,” he said. “Look who’s back.”

“Wha—wha—wha?” Alex was beginning to stutter, when Wendy pulled herself together and interrupted.

“Well,
HI!
, G.G.,” she said, with her best TV-hostess smile. “Where did you come from?”

“Yeah,” Tierney said. “I thought you were living up in Chico now.”

G.G. took off his backpack and sat down. “I’m back,” he said. He took out his notebook and kept his eyes on it as he went on. “I’m back with my dad. He got out of the clinic last week, and I came back to live with him. He’s—he’s all right now. He hasn’t had a drink in six weeks. Besides, it was no big deal. I just had this little concussion from hitting my head on something when I fell down. Well, yeah, he knocked me down. See, he told me not to use the phone
because he thought I was going to call the police or my mom or something, so when he caught me calling you guys, he blew his top. But we’re getting along great now. So, hey. Let’s get started. Who’s reading?”

So they went on with the meeting. For the first few minutes G.G. was quieter and more polite than usual, but before the workshop was over, he was pretty much back to normal—making sarcastic comments and laughing harder at things that were embarrassing than things that were funny. And when Libby asked him if he wanted to read, he said he didn’t have anything ready but he was working on another war story and he’d have it ready to read next time.

Next time. The thought gave Libby a sinking feeling and, looking around at the others, she could tell that they were feeling pretty much the same way. None of them said anything, but it was easy to tell what they were thinking.

G.G. left early. “I’m outta here,” he said, getting up suddenly and putting on his backpack. “I got to get home a little early because my dad and I are going out to dinner. See ya.” Then he went out and down the stairs, leaving the door open.

Tierney got up, closed the door, leaned against it, and groaned. “Okay, you dudes. You been breaking the Ten Commandments, or what?”

Wendy looked shocked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean somebody must have done something really evil to deserve this.”