Clarissa’s father asked me what I would like to drink. Everything seemed so urbane that I thought he was actually asking me what kind of cocktail I would like. “Oh, nothing for me, thank you,” I said, not so much because I thought that I shouldn’t drink a cocktail, but because I was trying to be polite, and I knew that one of the rules of polite behavior was to refuse everything the first time it was offered. He asked Clarissa what she would like. She looked as if she were considering a long list of drinks and then finally said, “I’ll have a Shirley Temple.”
“All right,” said her father. “Sure you wouldn’t like something, Peter?”
“You know,” I said, thrusting my hands into my pockets, “I guess I could use a Shirley Temple.”
Mr. Bud chuckled at this, and I chuckled back, as if I had intended the remark to be funny, but I hadn’t, and I felt like a fool. I tried mightily from then on to show Mr. and Mrs. Bud that I was quite grown-up for my age. I attempted some grown-up talk, drawing on what I heard from my parents. I tried several topics. The first was business.
“How’s the by-product business, Mr. Bud?” I asked, rocking on my heels and taking a swig of my Shirley Temple.
Mr. Bud raised an eyebrow, glanced at Mrs. Bud, and grinned. “Not bad, Peter,” he said. “How’s school?”
Next I tried local politics.
“Do you think there’s a chance that the mayor will come to his senses sometime soon?” I asked, as my father did when he was reading the paper.
Mr. Bud looked startled. “What on earth do you mean?” he asked.
At dinner, I praised Mrs. Bud’s cooking. “Yessir,” I concluded, quoting from a Western I’d seen, “this is the best meal I’ve had in weeks.” This seemed to be pretty well received, so I pushed on, figuring to make the most of the one topic that seemed to be a success. There wasn’t anything else that I could take from the Western, so I borrowed my mother’s highest praise for someone else’s cooking. “You must give me the recipe for these mashed potatoes,” I said. This brought down the house, and Mr. Bud said, “You’re a regular comedian, Peter.”
So I attempted to tell a joke. I began while Mrs. Bud and Clarissa were clearing away the dinner plates and serving dessert. As soon as I had introduced the main characters, three rabbits called Phhht, Phhht-Phhht, and Phhht-Phhht-Phhht, just at the moment when I had succeeded in capturing everyone’s attention, I realized that I had forgotten the punch line. While we ate our dessert, I stretched the joke out with details of the home life of these rabbits, their forebears, the rabbit village where they lived, their hobbies and favorite meals, and the mysterious illness that led to the death of the youngest of them, Phhht, and then struck the middle one, Phhht-Phhht, while my mind raced ahead to try to recover the end of the story.
Mr. Bud finally said, “Peter, maybe you and Clarissa would like to be excused.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll finish the joke for you later.”
Clarissa and I went into the living room and sat on the sofa. I felt that I had made an ass of myself, and when I heard laughter come from the dining room I was sure of it. To my surprise, Clarissa didn’t seem to think so at all. She slid over beside me on the sofa and linked her arm with mine.
“That was a wonderful story,” she said. “It’s amazing how relaxed you are. I would think it must be hard for you to be in the position you’re in, having to pick the boys and girls to play the parts,” she said.
“It is,” I said. “It really is. In fact—”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh, “it must be terribly hard. I think that I’d just want to crawl into a hole and hide if I had to say to someone I knew, someone I liked, ‘Sorry, but I gave the part to someone else.’”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I sure know I’d hate to hear it. It makes me wish I hadn’t tried out for the part of Cordelia,” she said.
“I thought you just did it for fun,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” she said. I felt her shudder, and she reached across me to take her muff from the end table. “But I don’t even know why I bothered,” she said. “I know I wasn’t as good as the others.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” I said. “You were great.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
“But you probably want somebody prettier.”
“Oh no, not necessarily,” I said, too quickly. “Uh, that’s not what I mean,” I added.
“I’ll bet you’d like to have Veronica McCall play Cordelia,” she said.
“Veronica McCall?” I said. “Well, I have to think about everybody who tried out, you know. I have to be fair. I have to think about Veronica, and I have to think about Spike O’Grady.”
“Spike O’Grady?” said Clarissa.
“Of course,” I said. “She tried out, too.”
“Well, I guess you do have to give everybody a fair chance,” she said. Then, after a long pause, she said, “Well, I’ve made up my mind!” After another long pause and a deep breath, she announced, “I’d like to drop out of the competition for Cordelia.”
“Drop out?” I said. “But I thought you weren’t even—”
“Yes,” she said, with a sigh. “That would make your job easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, yes—” I began. She turned from me suddenly and buried her face in her muff. I heard something that sounded like a sob, a muffled sob. “Clarissa?” I said.
There was a pause. Clarissa pulled a tissue from her muff and blew her nose. “Yes,” she said, in the smallest of voices.
“Did I hear you crying?” I asked.
“Oh, no, no,” she said, still facing away from me. “Don’t worry about me.” She made a small choking sound.
“Maybe you’re getting a cold,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” she blubbered.
“Peter!” called Mr. Bud. “Your father’s here!”
About halfway home, I remembered the end of the joke. Phhht is dead, and Phhht-Phhht is gravely ill. In a voice cracking with emotion, Phhht-Phhht-Phhht says to the doctor who is examining Phhht-Phhht, “Oh, doctor, you have to save him—I already have one Phhht in the grave.”
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You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.
🎧 150: Clarissa’s father asked ...