My Father’s Daughter by E. L. Konigsburg

Author:E. L. Konigsburg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

eight

One of the buttons on her desk lit up; she threw a switch and her secretary announced over a conference phone speaker that the president of Hooton had called twice. “Oh” she said, “tell him he’ll have to wait. We’re about to get to Bunny Waldheim.” Then she threw the switch again, and all the buttons on her desk went dark. She held her fingers over her mouth for a time, gazing out over her desk. Her eyes at last focused on me. “What color,” she asked, “would you color Bunny Waldheim?”

“Easy,” I answered. “In the sixties, I would have colored her beatnik; now, in the seventies, I would have to color her hippy. But then, when we first met her, I would have had to color her burgundy for that foyer and blue for her jeans. Burgundy and blue, I guess. And on that first day I would have colored her pink.”

“Do you mean McCarthy pink? The famous Fifties pinko?”

“Oh no. Not pink as a shade of Communist red. Baby fink”

’Yes,” she said. “I remember. There was that infant.”

CAROLINE MOVED OUT the day that school resumed. I came home, hoping that something would have delayed her, hoping that she would still be there, but she wasn’t. Her new place was on Fifth Aveune, high up on a bluff overlooking the trolley tracks. She had chosen one of the first big apartment buildings that had replaced an old mansion. That evening she called to give me her new phone number and to invite me to visit whenever I wished. “Say hello to Heidi for me,” she said before hanging up.

I didn’t. Phone calls were something I could have that Heidi. couldn’t; I ’d keep it that way for” a while.

The first Thursday after Christmas recess I saw Caroline, waiting for me instead of Maurice. She had taken her driving test, and as part of his private celebration at having her (officially) back, Father had given her a car, a small car, a Hudson two door, gunmetal gray. I ran out, my math book slipping and bending the metal spiral of my notebook and causing marks like mice tracks to appear on the palm of my hand. I ran toward the car and stopped short. Heidi was in the front seat.

“Get in back,” I said to Heidi.

“Get in back yourself.”

“Someone seeing your cretin face up front can cause an accident.”

“Yeah? Then how come I don’t cause any accidents when I ride up front with Maurice?”

“Because ‘Maurice is the only person in Pittsburgh with a face funnier than yours.”

“Then we should have double accidents. Double. Double. Double. Double. Double; Double.”

“Heidi,” I yelled. “Shut up, or I’m going to stuff my shirt sleeve into your mouth—with my arm in it. Now move over. We’ll all three sit up front.”

Heidi bumped her way over to the middle of the front seat, and I climbed in beside her. I looked over at her, and I said, “You stink!”

And Heidi answered, “If I stink, I don’t know how a snot-nose like you can smell me.

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