To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie. Ellen Conford

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      “I’m not bouncing anymore,” Honey said. But she was. She was bouncing on the floor, she and Bunny, jiggling around in their matching yellow sunback dresses, like jumping jacks that had to go to the bathroom.

      “Now you two get out of here,” Uncle Ted said sternly. “Sylvie isn’t feeling well and you’re just making her feel worse.”

      Hardy har har, I thought. Just like he was really concerned. There was only one reason he wanted them out of my room and it had nothing to do with my pretend sickness.

      “That’s okay,” I said. I made my voice sound brave and noble, like I was really suffering but determined not to show it. Like Judy Garland in A Star Is Born when she gets the Academy Award. “They don’t bother me.”

      “You can’t even eat, Sylvie?” Bunny said. “Not even hamburgers and hot dogs?”

      “I don’t think so. Oohh,” I groaned, and held my stomach. It was absolutely vital that they think I was too sick to go to school tomorrow, which was one of the two reasons I had to start being sick today. The other was so that I could get out of going to church with them and get my packing done.

      “Not even barbecue hamburgers?” Honey said, like she could hardly believe it.

      I could have kicked myself for saying I had a stomachache instead of a headache or sore throat or something, because I really was hungry. I should have sneaked something to eat while they were at church. I hadn’t eaten anything since supper last night and I was starving. And now it looked like I wouldn’t get to eat until tomorrow.

      Aunt Grace came into the room. “How are you feeling, Sylvie? Any better?” She pulled off her white gloves and fanned herself with them. “My, it certainly is hot up here. You must be perishing.” She took off her little white hat and patted her Blonde Mink curls. (Courtesy of Mr. Anthony’s Salon de Beauté.)

      “Sylvie is sick,” Honey said. “In her stomach.”

      “Sylvie might throw up,” Bunny added. She sounded like she was almost excited at that idea.

      “Now shoo, you two, and change out of your dresses and leave Sylvie alone. Goodness, Sylvie, I wish you had come to church with us. It just isn’t the easiest thing in the world to pray and keep your eye on those two at the same time. They were just impossible without you.”

      I’ll bet they were. I noticed it never occurred to Aunt Grace to worry about how I was supposed to pray and keep the twins from leaping all over the church like they were in a Martin and Lewis movie.

      “We prayed for the President,” Honey said importantly. “That he should get better.”

      “That he shouldn’t die,” Bunny said, nodding.

      “And we prayed that Elvis Presley should die,” Honey said.

      “Oh, Honey, you’re all mixed up,” Aunt Grace laughed. “That was the sermon. You should have been there, Sylvie. The sermon was very appropriate. It was all about this rock-and-roll music.”

      “Did he really say Elvis should die?” I asked, horrified. Dr. Cannon could get pretty worked up about juvenile delinquency and communism and all, but I never heard him actually wish for somebody to die.

      “No, he just said the music ought to die out and probably would. He certainly doesn’t think much of that Elvis, though, I’ll tell you that.”

      Boy, was I sorry I missed that sermon! It was probably the first time in history Dr. Cannon preached something I was interested in.

      “All right, look,” Uncle Ted said impatiently. “Are we going to get this barbecue started or what? Sylvie, you want to come down and lie on the patio where it’s cooler? Even if you don’t want to eat—”

      “No, maybe later. I just want to rest. I feel real weak and dizzy.”

      “All right. Maybe you can have some tea and toast later,” Aunt Grace said. “Now, come on everybody, and let Sylvie rest in peace.”

      Finally! They all cleared out of my room, including Uncle Ted. I heard the sounds of drawers and closets opening and closing as they changed from their Sunday clothes into their backyard clothes.

      Soon the twins were shrieking in the backyard at the fire, and the smell of charcoal smoke began to drift up through my window. I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I washed all over with a washcloth and cold water then patted myself dry with a towel and dusted with Cashmere Bouquet talcum powder. I didn’t have to worry about Uncle Ted coming upstairs as long as the barbecue was going.

      He loved to barbecue. He made a real big deal out of it, like he was chef for the day and no one else could turn a hamburger on the grill like he could.

      Aunt Grace acted the same way, and it was such a joke! She got him this barbecue apron with a picture of a chef in a tall white hat holding a big platter of hamburgers and saying, “Come and get it!” And the only thing he actually did was to light the charcoal and turn over the hamburgers and hot dogs. Because Aunt Grace mixed up the hamburger and squeezed it into flat patties, and made the potato salad and the coleslaw, unless she bought them from the delicatessen. And I peeled the cellophane off each hot dog, so what was the big deal about Uncle Ted doing all the cooking?

      But everybody had to make a fuss about how good his hamburgers were, and you couldn’t get that charcoal taste in a restaurant, and even a hot dog at a baseball game didn’t taste this good, all black and puffy and squirting juice out when you bit into it.

      What it was, really, was that when we had barbecues, Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted could act like we were all one big, happy, normal American family, just like in the article in Look magazine, with pictures showing how the weekend barbecue is the most popular way for families to practice togetherness.

      We would come home from church, where everyone knew how good and kind Uncle Ted and Aunt Grace were to poor Sylvie, taking her in even though they had two children of their own to care for. I guess no one ever stopped to think that that might be just the reason Aunt Grace and Uncle Ted took me in. Maybe the O’Connors hadn’t needed a baby-sitter that much, but here I was practically the twins’ second mother. And then there was the money the county paid them every month. That didn’t hurt either.

      Anyway, when the church service was over, Uncle Ted was all cheerful and smiling, seeing all those men he sold insurance to, slapping people on the back and praising Dr. Cannon’s “thought-provoking” sermon and probably feeling so all-around noble and fatherly and religious that he completely forgot all the times he came into my room to “kiss me good-night.”

      And Aunt Grace would be showing off the twins in their matching dresses, and putting her arm around me to show everyone I was just like her own daughter, and telling Dr. Cannon that his sermon was so inspiring, it really gave her something to think about. And a minute later she’d ask Uncle Ted whether she should try to make a heart-shaped marshmallow Jell-O mold for her canasta group the next day, or would it get all mushed up when she tried to unmold it?

      So, feeling all warm and churchy, they’d go home and change and set us all up in the backyard, just like we were posing for those pictures in Look magazine. The perfect family, doing what the perfect family does every weekend. They probably wished a photographer would come and take a picture of us and print it in some magazine СКАЧАТЬ