Ramona and Her Father (5 page)

“I'm sorry, but there aren't many pumpkin recipes. I can't bear to waste good food,” said Mrs. Quimby. “But I do remember seeing a recipe for pumpkin soup someplace—”

“No!” Her family was unanimous.

Ramona was so disappointed because her father had ignored all her little signs that she did not feel much like eating, and especially not pumpkin pie for what seemed like the hundredth time. She eyed her triangle of pie and knew she could not make it go down. She was sick of pumpkin. “Are you sure you cut off all the parts with cat spit on them?” she asked her mother.

“Ramona!” Mr. Quimby, who had been stirring his coffee, dropped his spoon. “Please! We are eating.”

They had been eating, but after Ramona's remark no one ate a bite of pie.

 

Mr. Quimby continued to smoke, and Ramona continued to worry. Then one afternoon, when Ramona came home from school, she found the back door locked. When she pounded on it with her fist, no one answered. She went to the front door, rang the doorbell, and waited. Silence. Lonely silence. She tried the door even though she knew it was locked. More silence. Nothing like this had ever happened to Ramona before. Someone was always waiting when she came home from school.

Ramona was frightened. Tears filled her eyes as she sat down on the cold concrete steps to think. Where could her father be? She thought of her friends at school, Davy and Sharon, who did not have fathers. Where had their fathers gone? Everybody had a father sometime. Where could they go?

Ramona's insides tightened with fear. Maybe her father was angry with her. Maybe he had gone away because she tried to make him stop smoking. She thought she was saving his life, but maybe she was being mean to him. Her mother said she must not annoy her father, because he was worried about being out of work. Maybe she had made him so angry he did not love her anymore. Maybe he had gone away because he did not love her. She thought of all the scary things she had seen on television—houses that had fallen down in earthquakes, people shooting people, big hairy men on motor-cycles—and knew she needed her father to keep her safe.

The cold from the concrete seeped through Ramona's clothes. She wrapped her arms around her knees to keep warm as she watched a dried leaf scratch along the driveway in the autumn wind. She listened to the honking of a flock of wild geese flying through the gray clouds on their way south for the winter. They came from Canada, her father had once told her, but that was before he had gone away. Raindrops began to dot the driveway, and tears dotted Ramona's skirt. She put her head down on her knees and cried. Why had she been so mean to her father? If he ever came back he could smoke all he wanted, fill the ashtrays and turn the air blue, and she wouldn't say a single word. She just wanted her father back, black lungs and all.

And suddenly there he was, scrunching through the leaves on the driveway with the collar of his windbreaker turned up against the wind and his old fishing hat pulled down over his eyes. “Sorry I'm late,” he said, as he got out his key. “Is that what all this boohooing is about?”

Ramona wiped her sweater sleeve across her nose and stood up. She was so glad to see her father and so relieved that he had not gone away, that anger blazed up. Her tears became angry tears. Fathers were not supposed to worry their little girls. “Where have you been?” she demanded. “You're supposed to be here when I come home from school! I thought you had gone away and left me.”

“Take it easy. I wouldn't go off and leave you. Why would I do a thing like that?” Mr. Quimby unlocked the door and, with a hand on Ramona's shoulder, guided her into the living room. “I'm sorry I had to worry you. I was collecting my unemployment insurance, and I had to wait in a long line.”

Ramona's anger faded. She knew all about long lines and understood how difficult they were. She had waited in lines for her turn at the slides in the park, she had waited in lines in the school lunchroom back in the days when her family could spare lunch money once in a while, she had waited in lines with her mother at the check-out counter in the market, when she was little she had waited in long, long lines to see Santa Claus in the department store, and—these were the worst, most boring lines of all—she had waited in lines with her mother in the bank. She felt bad because her father had had to wait in line, and she also understood that collecting unemployment insurance did not make him happy.

“Did somebody try to push ahead of you?” Ramona was wise in the ways of lines.

“No. The line was unusually long today.” Mr. Quimby went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of instant coffee. While he waited for the water to heat, he poured Ramona a glass of milk and gave her a graham cracker.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

Ramona looked at her father over the rim of her glass and nodded, spilling milk down her front. Silently he handed her a dish towel to wipe up while he poured hot water over the instant coffee in his mug. Then he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a package of cigarettes, looked at it a moment, and tossed it onto the counter. Ramona had never seen her father do this before. Could it be…

Mr. Quimby leaned against the counter and took a sip of coffee. “What would you like to do?” he asked Ramona.

Ramona considered before she answered. “Something big and important.” But what? she wondered. Break a record in that book of records Beezus talked about? Climb Mount Hood?

“Such as?” her father asked.

Ramona finished scrubbing the front of her sweater with the dish towel. “Well—” she said, thinking. “You know that big bridge across the Columbia River?”

“Yes. The Interstate Bridge. The one we cross when we drive to Vancouver.”

“I've always wanted to stop on that bridge and get out of the car and stand with one foot in Oregon and one foot in Washington.”

“A good idea, but not practical,” said Mr. Quimby. “Your mother has the car, and I doubt if cars are allowed to stop on the bridge. What else?”

“It's not exactly important, but I always like to crayon,” said Ramona. How long would her father leave his cigarettes on the counter?

Mr. Quimby set his cup down. “I have a great idea! Let's draw the longest picture in the world.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of shelf paper. When he tried to unroll it on the kitchen floor, the paper rolled itself up again. Ramona quickly solved that problem by Scotch-taping the end of the roll to the floor. Together she and her father unrolled the paper across the kitchen and knelt with a box of crayons between them.

“What shall we draw?” she asked.

“How about the state of Oregon?” he suggested. “That's big enough.”

Ramona's imagination was excited. “I'll begin with the Interstate Bridge,” she said.

“And I'll tackle Mount Hood,” said her father.

Together they went to work, Ramona on the end of the shelf paper and her father halfway across the kitchen. With crayons Ramona drew a long black bridge with a girl standing astride a line in the center. She drew blue water under the bridge, even though the Columbia River always looked gray. She added gray clouds, gray dots for raindrops, and all the while she was drawing she was trying to find courage to tell her father something.

Ramona glanced at her father's picture, and sure enough he had drawn Mount Hood peaked with a hump on the south side exactly the way it looked in real life on the days when the clouds lifted.

“I think you draw better than anybody in the whole world,” said Ramona.

Mr. Quimby smiled. “Not quite,” he said.

“Daddy—” Ramona summoned courage. “I'm sorry I was mean to you.”

“You weren't mean.” Mr. Quimby was adding trees at the base of the mountain. “You're right, you know.”

“Am I?” Ramona wanted to be sure.

“Yes.”

This answer gave Ramona even more courage. “Is that why you didn't have a cigarette with your coffee? Are you going to stop smoking?”

“I'll try,” answered Mr. Quimby, his eyes on his drawing. “I'll try.”

Ramona was filled with joy, enthusiasm, and relief. “You can do it, Daddy! I know you can do it.”

Her father seemed less positive. “I hope so,” he answered, “but if I succeed, Picky-picky will still have to eat Puss-puddy.”

“He can try, too,” said Ramona and slashed dark V's across her gray sky to represent a flock of geese flying south for the winter.

T
he Quimby women, as Mr. Quimby referred to his wife and daughters, were enthusiastic about Mr. Quimby's decision to give up smoking. He was less enthusiastic because, after all, he was the one who had to break the habit.

Ramona took charge. She collected all her father's cigarettes and threw them in the garbage, slamming down the lid of the can with a satisfying crash, a crash much less satisfying to her father, who looked as if he wanted those cigarettes back.

“I was planning to cut down gradually,” he said. “One less cigarette each day.”

“That's not what you said,” Ramona informed him. “You said you would try to give up smoking, not try to cut down gradually.”

There followed an even more trying time in the Quimby household. Out of habit Mr. Quimby frequently reached for cigarettes that were no longer in his pocket. He made repeated trips to the refrigerator, looking for something to nibble on. He thought he was gaining weight. Worst of all, he was even crosser than when he first lost his job.

With a cross father, a tired mother, a sister who worried about creative writing, and a cat who grudgingly ate his Puss-puddy, Ramona felt she was the only happy member of the family left. Even she had run out of ways to amuse herself. She continued to add to the longest picture in the world, but she really wanted to run and yell and make a lot of noise to show how relieved she was that her father was giving up smoking.

One afternoon Ramona was on her knees on the kitchen floor working on her picture when Beezus came home from school, dropped her books on the kitchen table, and said, “Well, it's come.”

Ramona looked up from the picture of Glenwood School she was drawing on the roll of shelf paper taped to the floor. Mr. Quimby, who had a dish towel tucked into his belt for an apron, turned from the kitchen sink. “What's come?” he asked. Although it was late in the afternoon, he was washing the breakfast dishes. He had been interviewed for two different jobs that morning.

“Creative writing.” Beezus's voice was filled with gloom.

“You make it sound like a calamity,” said her father.

Beezus sighed. “Well—maybe it won't be so bad this time. We aren't supposed to write stories or poems after all.”

“Then what does Mrs. Mester mean by creative?”

“Oh, you know….” Beezus twirled around on one toe to define creative.

“What are you supposed to write if you don't write a story or a poem?” asked Ramona. “Arithmetic problems?”

Beezus continued to twirl as if spinning might inspire her. “She said we should interview some old person and ask questions about something they did when they were our age. She said she would run off what we wrote on the ditto machine, and we could make a book.” She stopped twirling to catch the dish towel her father tossed to her. “Do we know anyone who helped build a log cabin or something like that?”

“I'm afraid not,” said Mr. Quimby. “We don't know anybody who skinned buffalo either. How old is old?”

“The older the better,” said Beezus.

“Mrs. Swink is pretty old,” volunteered Ramona. Mrs. Swink was a widow who lived in the house on the corner and drove an old sedan that Mr. Quimby admiringly called a real collector's item.

“Yes, but she wears polyester pant suits,” said Beezus, who had grown critical of clothing lately. She did not approve of polyester pant suits, white shoes, or Ramona's T-shirt with Rockaway Beach printed on the front.

“Mrs. Swink is old inside the pant suits,” Ramona pointed out.

Beezus made a face. “I can't go barging in on her all by myself and ask her a bunch of questions.” Beezus was the kind of girl who never wanted to go next door to borrow an egg and who dreaded having to sell mints for the Campfire Girls.

“I'll come,” said Ramona, who was always eager to go next door to borrow an egg and looked forward to being old enough to sell mints.

“You don't barge in,” said Mr. Quimby, wringing out the dishcloth. “You phone and make an appointment. Go on. Phone her now and get it over.”

Beezus put her hand on the telephone book. “But what'll I say?” she asked.

“Just explain what you want and see what she says,” said Mr. Quimby. “She can't bite you over the telephone.”

Beezus appeared to be thinking hard. “OK,” she said with some reluctance, “but you don't have to listen.”

Ramona and her father went into the living room and turned on the television so they couldn't overhear Beezus. When Ramona noticed her father reached for the cigarettes that were not there, she gave him a stern look.

In a moment Beezus appeared, looking flustered. “I meant sometime in a day or so, but she said to come right now because in a little while she has to take a molded salad to her lodge for a potluck supper. Dad, what'll I
say
? I haven't had time to think.”

“Just play it by ear,” he advised. “Something will come to you.”

“I'm going too,” Ramona said, and Beezus did not object.

Mrs. Swink saw the sisters coming and opened the door for them as they climbed the front steps. “Come on in, girls, and sit down,” she said briskly. “Now what is it you want to interview me about?”

Beezus seemed unable to say anything, and Ramona could understand how it might be hard to ask someone wearing a polyester pant suit questions about building a log cabin. Someone had to say something so Ramona spoke up. “My sister wants to know what you used to do when you were a little girl.”

Beezus found her tongue. “Like I said over the phone. It's for creative writing.”

Mrs. Swink looked thoughtful. “Let's see. Nothing very exciting, I'm afraid. I helped with the dishes and read a lot of books from the library. The
Red Fairy Book
and
Blue Fairy Book
and all the rest.”

Beezus looked worried, and Ramona could see that she was trying to figure out what she could write about dishes and library books. Ramona ended another awkward silence by asking, “Didn't you make anything?” She had noticed that Mrs. Swink's living room was decorated with mosaics made of dried peas and beans and with owls made out of pinecones. The dining-room table was strewn with old Christmas cards, scissors, and paste, a sure sign of a craft project.

“Let's see now….” Mrs. Swink looked thoughtful. “We made fudge, and—oh, I know—tin-can stilts.” She smiled to herself. “I had forgotten all about tin-can stilts until this very minute.”

At last Beezus could ask a question. “How did you make tin-can stilts?”

Mrs. Swink laughed, remembering. “We took two tall cans. Two-pound coffee cans were best. We turned them upside down and punched two holes near what had once been the bottom of each. The holes had to be opposite one another on each can. Then we poked about four feet of heavy twine through each pair of holes and knotted the ends to make a loop. We set one foot on each can, took hold of a loop of twine in each hand, and began to walk. We had to remember to lift each can by the loop of twine as we raised a foot or we fell off—my knees were always skinned. Little girls wore dresses instead of slacks in those days, and I always had dreadful scabs on my knees.”

Maybe this was why Mrs. Swink always wore pant suits now, thought Ramona. She didn't want scabs on her knees in case she fell down.

“And the noise those hollow tin cans made on the sidewalk!” continued Mrs. Swink, enjoying the memory. “All the kids in the neighborhood went clanking up and down. Sometimes the cans would cut through the twine, and we would go sprawling on the sidewalk. I became expert at walking on tin-can stilts and used to go clanking around the block yelling, ‘Pieface!' at all the younger children.”

Ramona and Beezus both giggled. They were surprised that someone as old as Mrs. Swink had once called younger children by a name they sometimes called one another.

“There.” Mrs. Swink ended the interview. “Does that help?”

“Yes, thank you.” Beezus stood up, and so did Ramona, although she wanted to ask Mrs. Swink about the craft project on the dining-room table.

“Good.” Mrs. Swink opened the front door. “I hope you get an
A
on your composition.”

“Tin-can stilts weren't exactly what I expected,” said Beezus, as the girls started home. “But I guess I can make them do.”

Do! Ramona couldn't wait to get to Howie's house to tell him about the tin-can stilts. And so, as Beezus went home to labor over her creative writing, Ramona ran over to the Kemps' house. Just as she thought, Howie listened to her excited description and said, “I could make some of those.” Good old Howie. Ramona and Howie spent the rest of the afternoon finding four two-pound coffee cans. The search involved persuading Howie's mother to empty out her coffee into mayonnaise jars and calling on neighbors to see if they had any empty cans.

The next day after school Howie arrived on the Quimby doorstep with two sets of tin-can stilts. “I made them!” he announced, proud of his work. “And Willa Jean wanted some, so I made her a pair out of tuna cans so she wouldn't have far to fall.”

“I knew you could do it!” Ramona, who had already changed to her playclothes, stepped onto two of the cans and pulled the twine loops up tight before she took a cautious step, lifting a can as she lifted her foot. First the left foot, then the right foot.
Clank, clank
. They worked! Howie clanked along beside her. They clanked carefully down the driveway to the sidewalk, where Ramona tried to pick up speed, forgot to lift a can at the same time she lifted her foot, and, as Mrs. Swink had recalled, fell off her stilts. She caught herself before she tumbled to the sidewalk and climbed back on.

Clank, clank. Clank, clank
. Ramona found deep satisfaction in making so much noise, and so did Howie. Mrs. Swink, turning into her driveway in her dignified old sedan, smiled and waved. In a moment of daring, Ramona yelled, “Pieface!” at her.

“Pieface yourself!” Mrs. Swink called back, understanding Ramona's joke.

Howie did not approve. “You aren't supposed to call grown-ups pieface,” he said. “Just kids.”

“I can call Mrs. Swink pieface,” boasted Ramona. “I can call her pieface any old time I want to.”
Clank, clank. Clank, clank
. Ramona was having such a good time she began to sing at the top of her voice, “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer. You take one down and pass it around. Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall…”

Howie joined the singing. “Ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall. You take one down and pass it around. Ninety-seven bottles of beer…”

Clank, clank. Clank, clank
. Ninety-six bottles of beer, ninety-five bottles of beer on the wall. Sometimes Ramona and Howie tripped, sometimes they stumbled, and once in a while they fell, muddying the knees of their corduroy pants on the wet sidewalk. Progress was slow, but what their stilts lost in speed they made up in noise.

Eighty-nine bottles of beer, eighty-six…Ramona was happier than than she had been in a long time. She loved making noise, and she was proud of being able to count backwards. Neighbors looked out their windows to see what all the racket was about while Ramona and Howie clanked determinedly on. “Eighty-one bottles of beer on the wall…” As Mrs. Swink had predicted, one of the twine loops broke, tumbling Ramona to the sidewalk. Howie knotted the ends together, and they clanked on until supper-time.

“That was some racket you two made,” remarked Mr. Quimby.

Mrs. Quimby asked, “Where on earth did you two pick up that song about bottles of beer?”

“From Beezus,” said Ramona virtuously. “Howie and I are going to count backwards all the way to one bottle of beer.”

Beezus, doing homework in her room, had not missed out on the conversation. “We used to sing it at camp when the counselors weren't around,” she called out.