Isabelle the Itch: The Isabelle Series, Book One (5 page)

“Let's go!” Isabelle's father bellowed. That meant he was going to church with them. He didn't always. Sometimes he had work to do that he saved for Sunday morning. But when he couldn't think of any work to do and had to go to church, he was always very eager to get everybody organized.

“How come you're going with us today, Dad?” she asked.

“Because he couldn't think of any way out,” her mother said.

“Look at Al Blake's lawn,” her father marveled. Al Blake lived across the street and had a lawn like green velvet. “He says there's nothing to it, but I suspect he buys sod by the foot and ships it in under cover of night.” Isabelle's father had a lot of weeds in his lawn.

Isabelle practiced her police car siren noise on the way to church. She saw her father watching her in the rear-view mirror, so she quit. She knew that he knew what she was doing.

Her mother was much easier to fool.

When they got inside church, their father separated Isabelle and Philip. Years ago, when they were little, they had horsed around a lot, which was why they weren't allowed to sit together. Isabelle still felt like horsing around but Philip was too old.

For a while, she sat quietly. Her nose tickled again. She chewed on a piece of her long hair and put it under her nose to make a mustache. She turned around and twirled her mustache. Some kids giggled. She twirled again. More giggles.

Isabelle's father glared at her. She half closed her eyes and looked at the sun coming through the stained glass windows. The colors ran together and blurred.

The minister said, “Abraham Lincoln said, ‘Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.'” So Isabelle listened. She liked Mr. Lincoln very much.

“If that's true,” the minister continued, “being happy shouldn't be as elusive as it seems. One way to happiness is to do things for other people. Try doing a good deed and not telling anyone about it. Try using a gentle word instead of a sharp one. Be nice to someone you don't particularly like. Remember, happiness comes from within.”

On the way home, Isabelle's mother turned to look at her.

“That was an unusually good sermon, I thought,” she said, giving Isabelle a piercing look. “Did you listen, Isabelle?”

“I like Abraham Lincoln. We studied him last week,” Isabelle said. “Some guy shot him while he was watching a play.”

“That was John Wilkes Booth, dummy,” Philip said loftily. “Anybody knows that.”

“I hope when I get in the eighth grade, I won't be as much of a know-it-all as you are,” Isabelle said.

“It was what I was talking about to you the other day,” her mother said. “Remember?”

Isabelle rolled down the window. Cold air rushed in. She sneezed. Once, twice, three times. She always sneezed in threes.

“You're getting a cold. Are you constipated?” her mother asked.

“Shut that!” her father yelled.

“Use a gentle word instead of a harsh one,” Isabelle said.

Under his breath, Philip sang, “Constipation.”

Isabelle stuffed her fingers in her ears. They rode the rest of the way in silence.

11

Aunt Maude's Volkswagen was pulled up in front of the house when they got home from church. Aunt Maude stopped in every Sunday after church.

“I can only stay a minute,” she said, undoing her fur piece. She said that every Sunday.

“Oh, stay for dinner,” Isabelle's mother said.

“I wouldn't think of it,” Aunt Maude said.

She always stayed.

Aunt Maude was a very little woman who wore very big hats. When she got behind the wheel of her Volkswagen, all you could see was Aunt Maude's hat. If she hadn't worn one, people would probably have thought no one was driving the car. In those hats, she looked like a toadstool. She had tiny feet and wore tiny shoes with very tall heels. Every week Isabelle and Philip bet each other as to whether or not Aunt Maude would make it up the front path, she teetered and tottered so dangerously on those heels.

She always made it, fair weather or foul. She never even sprained her ankle.

“If she falls down and sprains her ankle,” Isabelle often said, “we'd have to call an ambulance, I suppose, and maybe even a police car.”

“She wouldn't need an ambulance for a sprained ankle,” Philip said scornfully. “A sprain's never as good as an actual break.”

“Would we have to call an ambulance for a broken leg?” Isabelle asked.

“Maybe,” Philip said. “It's hard to say. It would depend on whether it was the femur or the tibia she broke.”

Isabelle pondered but did not admit to his superior knowledge.

“How about a police car?” she finally asked. “I thought you called the police when somebody had an accident.”

Philip snorted. “Only if she wrapped her car around a telephone pole, and she doesn't drive fast enough for that. The police are too busy to come, except for an emergency,” he said, as if he knew.

“I sure would like to have a police car in front of our house,” Isabelle said wistfully. “Herbie'd see it and Mary Eliza Shook. It'd drive her crazy. I bet she never had a police car in front of her stinky old house. With the siren going and the red lights flashing and everything. And Chauncey Lapidus. He'd make up a story about how that car was really on its way to his house only it got lost. That Chauncey is some liar.”

“Do I smell roast beef?” Aunt Maude asked. “Usually I don't take much in the middle of the day, just an apple and a cup of soup.”

Isabelle fixed her brown eyes on her father, but he wouldn't look at her. Last week, after Aunt Maude had left, Isabelle had heard him tell her mother that, for such a small person, Aunt Maude certainly put away a lot of food.

Isabelle went upstairs and put her hat on. Aunt Maude always wore her hat at the table and Isabelle thought that was sort of neat. Just like in a restaurant. Isabelle's hat was red and it had a ripply brim which she pulled down over her eyes. She'd fished it out of the lost-and-found at school and no one had ever claimed it.

Everybody watched her father carve the roast beef. He hated to carve, but he said he wouldn't feel like a man if he let her mother carve. So every Sunday he breathed heavily and muttered to himself while he carved.

Isabelle passed the rolls. She was hungry.

“May I ask what you're doing?” her mother asked.

“I'm passing the rolls,” Isabelle said.

“The hat. Take it off.”

“Why?” Isabelle asked. “Aunt Maude always wears hers.”

“Either remove it or yourself,” her father said.

Isabelle sat on her hat. How come it's all right if Aunt Maude wears her hat at the table and I can't, she asked silently. She'd have to check this later.

“That's a lovely cut of beef,” Aunt Maude said. “I imagine it cost a fortune.” She was very interested in what things cost.

“Well, it wasn't cheap,” Isabelle's mother said. “Stop fingering the silverware,” she directed Isabelle, and, “Philip, put your napkin in your lap.”

Sometimes her mother reminded Isabelle of a general, she gave so many orders.

Aunt Maude's fur piece lay on a chair in the living room and looked at Isabelle throughout the meal. It reminded her of Mary Eliza Shook. It had a nasty little face and a pointy chin. Isabelle felt as if Mary Eliza were looking at her all during dinner. She started making faces at the fur piece.

“Knock it off, Isabelle,” her father said. “Another little sliver?” he asked Aunt Maude.

“Just a very small piece,” Aunt Maude passed her plate.

“A growing girl like you needs nourishment,” he said, giving her a lovely thick slice with no fat on it that Isabelle had been planning on for herself. She hated fat.

“I saw your friend Mary Eliza Shook in the five-and-ten yesterday,” Isabelle's mother said. “She has such lovely manners. She was on her way to ballet lessons. She practices every day, she told me. Imagine!”

Isabelle crossed her eyes. “Mary Eliza Shook is a terrible loser,” she said. “When we play baseball and she strikes out, she throws the bat at people.”

Aunt Maude held up a finger. “Not on Sunday,” she said. “On Sunday we must be full of Christian charity.”

“Another piece, Maude?” Isabelle's father asked.

“Just a tiny one,” she said.

Watching Aunt Maude eat, Isabelle thought that Christian charity wasn't all she was full of on Sunday.

After dinner was over, Isabelle and Philip cleared the table.

“You just put your feet up and rest,” Isabelle's mother said to Aunt Maude, who had a tendency to break things.

When she'd finished her job, Isabelle stood on her head to watch television. She found it more interesting that way.

“Why does the child do that?” Aunt Maude asked. “She makes me feel all queasy in the stomach.”

When the spots in front of her eyes became too numerous to count and the roaring in her ears drowned out the sound, Isabelle righted herself and watched Aunt Maude try to stay awake.

It was a battle. Tiny feet in tiny shoes planted firmly, her big hat on her head, Aunt Maude fought off sleep as if it were an enemy.

Slowly, slowly, her head drooped until it hit her chest, blip! Aunt Maude's eyes opened and she looked around to see if anyone had noticed. After a bit, she'd fall off again and start to snore. Not a loud snore, like Isabelle's father's, but a tinkly little snore that barely made the roses on her hat wobble.

Once, Isabelle had invited Herbie over to watch Aunt Maude fall asleep. That was the one time she hadn't. She'd stayed awake and talked.

Herbie had said, “Always making up stories,” to Isabelle. He had been disgusted.

The doorbell rang and when Isabelle answered it, there stood Herbie with his father's army hat on. Aunt Maude looked over Isabelle's shoulder.

“My lands,” she said, “he looks like just a baby to me. I didn't know they were taking them
that
young.”

Herbie scowled. He didn't like being told he looked like a baby. By Aunt Maude or anyone else.

“Come on out and fight,” he said. “But no fair using feet.”

“On Sunday?” Aunt Maude was shocked. “I don't think that's the proper thing to do on Sunday. When I was a girl, we weren't allowed to as much as play cards on Sunday. And now this!”

“That's a neat hat,” Herbie told Aunt Maude.

She was very pleased. “Thank you,” she said. “I think people don't take enough interest in hats these days, don't you agree?”

But Herbie was too busy rolling in the dirt with Isabelle to answer. After they'd fought for about half an hour and Isabelle was winning, Herbie said, “Hey, I hear my mother calling me.”

Isabelle stopped banging his head on the ground to listen. “I don't hear her,” she said. Herbie skinned out from her clutches and ran away.

Isabelle chased him home but she didn't catch him. He'd had a head start, that was why.

“You're nothing but a whippersnapper,” she shouted under his window. Herbie hated to be called a whippersnapper more than anything.

“A big fat whippersnapper!”

After a while, it started to rain and a cold wind came up, so Isabelle gave up and went home. All in all, it hadn't been a bad day.

She would've written HERBIE IS A BIG FAT WHIPPERSNAPPER on her blackboard, but she didn't know how to spell whippersnapper. So she settled for HERBIE IS A FINK TOO.

12

“Did you call up on Saturday and make a loud noise over the telephone?” Mary Eliza demanded Monday morning.

Toe, heel, toe, tap, shuffle.

“Not me,” Isabelle said. “It was probably Chauncey.”

“Did we ever have a good time at Sally's! It was the best!” Mary Eliza rolled her eyes and rubbed her stomach. “We didn't get to sleep until practically morning.”

“So?” Isabelle retorted. “So?”

The new girl walked by, her head turned away from them.

“Hello, there,” Mary Eliza said brightly. Jane looked startled, bobbed her head in greeting and scuttled past.

“She's very timid,” Mary Eliza said. “She wouldn't even go to Sally's party. If you ask me, she was afraid.”

“Who did? Ask you, that is?” Isabelle said.

“Listen, dear,” Mary Eliza made a swipe at Isabelle, trying for her arm, “I think I should tell you. I think it's only fair.”

Punch, punch. Isabelle got in a few good ones on Mary Eliza's shoulder.

“You got the lowest mark in the spelling test,” Mary Eliza yelled. “I just happened to be passing Mrs. Esposito's desk and I just happened to see your paper.”

“You just happen to be the biggest pain in the neck I ever knew in my whole entire life!” Isabelle shouted. “I never want to speak to you again.”

“Don't. See if I care,” Mary Eliza said.

“You go home and get your scanties,” Isabelle sang, dancing.

Mary Eliza leaped and twirled, a smile on her face in case a photographer were around.

Isabelle stuck out her foot to make Mary Eliza go splat. But Mary Eliza nimbly avoided the foot and came to rest in a pose that made her look like a sea gull landing on a beach.

“That's an arabesque,” she explained.

“Who can't do an arabesque?” Isabelle did one of her own. “That's a cinch. Even old green-toothed Chauncey can do one.”

“I see London, I see France, I see Izzy's underpants.”

Chauncey appeared as if on cue.

“Guess who got the lowest mark in the spelling test?” Mary Eliza asked. “Mrs. Esposito wants to see her.”

Stiff-legged, Isabelle stomped in to see Mrs. Esposito. Mary Eliza pasted to her side, trying to link arms. Chauncey brought up the rear.

The only person in the room besides Mrs. Esposito was the new girl, Jane, working very industriously at something, her head bent down so that her chin almost touched her desk.