The Ice-Cream Truck

by Julie Weatherall

illustrated by Margaret Tan

           I can’t remember when the Radcliffs moved next door or who lived there before them. I know they came later to the block and kept themselves oddly secretive, yet boldly public at the same time, as though wishing to present themselves in a calculated light designed to fit into the neighbourhood. My memory images of the Radcliffs are vivid and just a bit evil. Their family members slipped perfectly into stereotypical, cartoon Disney characters: the wicked mother, frightening and omnipotent; the stupid, oldest, sidekick-accomplice brother, Beans; the older sister who somewhat resembled and was treated like a workhorse; and the very fat, very spoiled little princess sister.

           Most of us on the block were thin. Skinny, wiry, lean. We ran around with limbs flailing, knees sticking out, in some cases, bones protruding. We never stopped moving: running, jumping, climbing trees, pealing down the block in competitive races, jumping off the garage roof. Once, for a whole summer we played in the new house they were building across the lane: leaping from two-by-four to two-by-four; hanging from second-floor beams and swinging like monkeys; playing tag throughout the skeleton structure that was abandoned each night by the workmen, and coming home with socks as black as coffee grounds.

           Janice never joined us in these wild animal games of screaming, reckless abandon. I’m sure, however, that it wasn’t prudence on her mother’s part—foresight missing in the other mothers who had no notion of how dangerous these activities would seem forty years later. I’m certain that, instead, her mother, huge and short of breath, knew how ludicrous her favourite daughter would look playing with the lithe and flexible neighbourhood ‘kiddies’, as she called us. Janice’s clothes, too, were unsuitable for our wild kind of play, her frilly dresses and matching seersucker pedal pushers and poptops.

           But her reasons for not coming out to play when we called on her were never clear or straightforward. As we stood on her cement porch with its peeling red paint, wiggling loose bits of glass stucco or hopping up and down, we would try to peer past the tiny foyer for some glimpse of what went on within the Radcliff home. We heard sounds of television or radio, muted conversation and laughing of the type that was never heard in the other houses on the half-block that comprised my world when I was ten. Deep belly laughs stretched from the kitchen and through the living room, which we were too polite to crane our necks around and look at. The slightly sinister sounds dissipated in the air at our feet just as the messenger, sometimes Janice, sometimes her older sister, Bertie, returned with a new and always original reason for not coming out that evening.

           “We’re moving furniture.”

           “Beans went smeltin’ and we’re cleanin’ the fish.”

           “I godda help Mama with her hair ‘cuz she loves the way I brush it out so nice.”

           We would shuffle our feet and our faces would colour ever so slightly at these probable untruths; lying was an imported commodity on our block. We stopped going to call on her and let Janice come out and seek our company whenever she was able. She wasn’t our first choice anyway, and not just because of her physical limitations. She felt the need to brag and embellish and we never knew what was true and what she had made up.

           “I seen Elvis live,” she said.

           “Where?” I wanted to ask. “When?” But that wouldn’t have been polite and we were polite, even to people who weren’t. I always liked it when Debbie and her brother, Stewey, from across the street, were there because Stewey, quite rude himself and sometimes even mean, was not afraid to ask dangerous questions point blank.

           “Yeah,” he would say as I listened attentively. “So where’d ya see ‘im?”

           Janice’s brown eyes would widen almost imperceptibly before she caught herself and answered quickly. “Well, it was in the States. I can’t remember the name of the place no more.”

           “Yeah, that’s cuz you didn’t ever see him, that’s why. I hate him anyway,” answered Stewie, making Janice cry. It was exciting to watch the real-life drama, but I always felt guilty by inclusion when Janice’s mom finally made it to the door and ushered in her poor little maligned daughter, patting her on the head as she listened to the complaint about Stewie. Mrs. Radcliff’s piercing eyes, black-brown under curly dyed coal black hair, were like laser beams that severed the sanctity of our safeness, accusing us of unspeakable evils towards her family when we had done nothing. Even Stewie, who cared nothing about anyone, would turn away and shuffle off to his own backyard where he would throw rocks at the garage or chase the cat or do something that was borderline bad just to get his mother’s attention for a minute.

           It was okay to be scolded, reprimanded or even punished by your own mother. This was done ‘for your own good’ and could be bragged about later, after the sting of the words or the swatting had gone. “Wow, did I get it!” “Yeah, well you should have seen what happened to me!” Getting admonished by someone else’s mother, however, was unspeakable. It was the greatest humiliation possible, second only to having kids make fun of you at school.

           Somehow the other mothers on our block, different though they all were, knew this and rarely, if ever, said anything to any of us other than kind, but meaningless, platitudes. Except once when my Mom saw Stewie beating up a little kid from up the block under the cedar bush in Mrs. Dodgson’s front yard. She stood out on our front porch across the street, hands cupped around her mouth, and yelled at him to ‘stop that at once!’, her voice at full yodeling timbre. I slunk around into our backyard, ashamed, and didn’t call on anyone for the rest of that day.

           I remember the mothers back then: Debbie’s mom, who had a heart condition and always seemed laconic and lackadaisical; Leanne’s mother, who worked in an office, smoked cigarettes, and was usually seen with her hair in tight pin curls under a hairnet; Katie’s mom over on the next block, who was a nurse and very clever—small and dark, though still thick around the middle—and a little superior to the rest of us in the neighbourhood; then my Mom, dark, wavy hair and hazel eyes, strict and no-nonsense, but fair. None of them were even remotely alike, yet they were all part of a group to which Mrs. Radcliff could never belong.

           She dressed in black crepe dresses with her slip straps showing at the armholes and lacy edges protruding from the hemline where the dress had hiked up around her enormous bulk. She moved slowly, ponderous as a walrus on land, on those rare occasions when she left the house. Once, I saw her walking up from the bus stop in her nylon stockinged feet, shoes swinging from one hand, capacious black bag from the other. She commanded a kind of fearful respect by acting superior and powerful, by courting the favour of some and excluding others, and by maintaining a stronghold of mystery in her one-and-a-half-story post-war stucco rental house.

           I believe now that she was evil. In some small, domestic, familial way, she exerted her powers of deceit and manipulation, choosing some as favourites and marking off others to be the unchosen, unloved, unwanted. Her oldest daughter belonged to the latter group. I could never understand why, though I realized it even at the time. Bertie was a large, horse-like girl, and unlike the rest of us, nearly a woman. She almost never came out to play, was always working inside under a kind of house arrest, like a slave for her mother. On the very rare occasions when she could join us there was an awkwardness about her, an inability to follow the unspoken, untaught rules of play. She was a tall, dark, masculine girl with long, wavy, slightly greasy hair and a flat, impassive face that was permanently guarded against pain. She wasn’t unattractive, but she didn’t have the look one needed to fit in in those days.

           Neither did I, though I was in every way Bertie’s opposite: scrawny and freckled with short unfashionable hair and unflattering clothes. Friendly and excitable, I tried to get along with everyone, though I was often unsuccessful. In any case I, like Bertie, was not one of Mrs. Radcliff’s favourites. She sought out Shannon and Debbie from across the street as playmates for her youngest daughter, and once invited everyone in the neighbourhood except me to Janice’s birthday party. I don’t know why I irritated her so much since I was just a kid, but I was used to being excluded. There was a kind of pecking order game that kids played then: she’s ‘the one’, no she’s ‘the one’. An ever-changing merry-go-round of popularity that I couldn’t get a grip on, my hands always sliding off the big, ridged horse mane of life’s unfair games.

           Round about the middle of the summer, everyone’s lawn was usually crisp and brown except for the Radcliff’s lush carpet of fertilized green that Beans kept trim with the only gas mower on the block. Once a week he would walk up and down the short length of the yard, back and forth until it was finished. He walked calm as ever, his head cocked to one side and a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. The Radcliffs watered regularly and used lime, while the rest of us tended to water when the kids felt like running through the sprinkler and mow when they needed a chore to keep them occupied. I remember the crunchy, dry feel of our grass compared to the dense, soft expanse of velvety grass at the Radcliff’s otherwise very ordinary home.

           It was about that time, when the colour difference between our two lawns was at its most salient, that we would begin to tire of our usual summer activities. August stretched long and menacing; a blinding tunnel of endless, scorching days to be filled until school started in September. We were bored with our games of ‘spy’, hide-and-go-seek, and the chasing and hostage-taking game called ‘wolfie’. No one felt like trekking to the nearby park to swing or splash about in the cement pool any more. Even occasional trips to the beach had lost their panache. At some point between not setting up a Kool-Aid stand and not being in the mood to play baseball or tag or skip or anything else we usually played, we developed an unhealthy interest in what really went on in the Radcliff’s house.

           We had realized that almost no one went in there; that no one had actually ever seen the inside of their house other than the living room at the birthday party to which I had not been invited. We knew that Beans worked somewhere and took the bus home every day about five. He would walk up the two blocks from the bus stop, head tilted, as always, whistling. Sometimes we couldn’t leave our game in time so we politely said hello, but if we saw him coming from far enough away we would scoot around into the backyard.

           We also knew that Bertie did all of the work in that house and that it wasn’t just chores like we had to do—dishes and cleaning our rooms. It was cleaning with a bucket and a mop, cooking actual meals, and moving furniture. We knew that Mrs. Radcliff did nothing except watch TV and read trashy movie magazines. We knew that there was no Mr Radcliff. Not one of us had ever heard mention of a Mr. Radcliff. Ever. Not one single word. It was as though he had never existed.

           One day we were outside, lying around on our front grass in the shady part under the lilac bush. I lay on my back looking through the lacy, heart-shaped lilac leaves as Shannon and Debbie pulled out patches of moss from between the strangled blades of grass. We were about to continue a conversation when we suddenly heard voices from the Radcliffs’. The window to the front bedroom was open in the hot weather.

           “That’s her bedroom, you know,” whispered Shannon. “I’ve seen it before. She just lies around in there reading magazines and eating chocolates and stuff.”

           “Shhh!” warned Debbie. “Let’s listen.”

           But unlike in the movies, where overheard conversations are crystal clear and immediately reveal crucial facts needed by the lucky eavesdroppers, we could barely figure out who was talking. I started to say something and was shushed by Shannon, who, I felt, had no right to do any shushing since she had just been talking.

           “Listen!” said Debbie, again looking at us with raised eyebrows and a funny smile. They were talking louder now and we could hear the conversation.

           “’Z Beans home yet?” asked Mrs. Radcliff’s voice.

           “Not yet, Mam...” Bertie’s voice was cut off by Janice who had obviously entered the room at that moment. “Mamaah?” she whined in the cajoling little voice that used to irritate us so much when we were playing. “Has the ice-cream truck come by yet? Can I get somethin’ from the ice-cream truck?”

           At that point my Mom came out on the front porch looking for my sister, and the moment was lost. We dispersed from our lolling place and rolled down the little front hill a couple of times before we went off to help get ready for dinner at our various houses. But it had been a weird experience, accidentally entering someone else’s private world. It had the shivery, goosebumps feel of the forbidden; much more satisfying than our spy games where you knew you were spying on each other.

           The next day we three were together again, walking down to ‘Heather’s’ Store with a nickel apiece, except for Shannon who had a thin dime in her plastic shoulder bag. We came back with mojos, marshmallow bananas and strawberries, coal black jaw breakers and a sphere of sour grape bubble gum in little brown bags. Shannon had candy cigarettes, white with little red tips. She shared one with Debbie and me so that the three of us could pretend that we were movie stars walking up the two long, slow blocks in a cloud of blue smoke.

           “You know,” I said, “Janice gets something from the ice-cream truck every day.” This fact had not escaped my notice since I almost never got anything from the ice-cream truck. When I did, it was usually an orange Popsicle which was divided into two and shared with my sister.

           “I know,” said Debbie, who probably got fewer ice-cream truck treats than I did. Her mother made Kool-Aid ice cubes, which was not the same thing. “It’s not fair.”

           Shannon didn’t say anything. She got a lot more of that kind of thing than we did, but she didn’t have a mom, so we couldn’t resent her for it.

           “I think it’s kind of spoiled, getting something every day,” I continued, not letting the subject go. “Plus, she always gets revels or fudgesicles.” I only got ten-cent ice-cream treats on rare occasions and could imagine unwrapping the frozen bar and sticking my tongue against the side of it where it would stick for a minute before I started to eat it, licking it slowly so that it tasted like a chocolate milkshake and lasted a long time.

           “Well, it’s fattening to have ice-cream every day,” observed Shannon.

           “Yeah, well I guess that’s why she’s fat,” said Debbie.

           We continued along, scuffing summer canvas shoes or fwacking our thongs, and crunching our candy cigarettes, the clouds of imaginary smoke forgotten. We talked about what to do that day. A bike hike? No, too late already. Paper dolls? (That was Shannon’s idea.) No. Debbie and I did not have any new, cool paper dolls like Shannon’s. See who could catch the most bees, one at a time, in empty pickle jars? Maybe, but one could lie about the final number and it was too hard to keep more than a few in the jar at a time.

           We returned after lunch with even fewer ideas we could all agree on.

           “Maybe your Mom will let us make a cake.” I suggested to Debbie.

           “What about your Mom?” she countered.

           “I don’t think so,” I answered. I didn’t want to bother my Mom, who was not in a good mood and might come up with something more constructive I should be doing, like reading an article from the newspaper or reviewing my scales on the piano. “But it would be cool to make one at your house,” I tried again. Debbie’s Mom wasn’t as fussy about every little thing and usually didn’t stand over us when we did things. “Plus, we could put it on that cool ‘Happy Birthday’ stand.”

           “What cool ‘Happy Birthday’ stand?” asked Shannon.

           “You know, the white one? It’s like a kind of pedestal that you sit the cake on and it turns around with the cake on top of it.” I answered, even though it wasn’t really my question to answer. Debbie didn’t talk that much, a fact my mother frequently pointed out.

           “Hmm,” queried Shannon. “I think I remember it, but doesn’t the cake fall off?”

           “It doesn’t go fast,” said Debbie, “and it plays “Happy Birthday.”

           “It sounds just like the ice-cream truck,” I added.

           We looked at each other with wide eyes as we all wondered the same thing at the same time.

           “Do you think they would really believe it was the ice-cream truck?” I asked.

           “I don’t even know where my mom keeps it,” said Debbie.

           “And we can’t ask her!” said Shannon, starting to get excited at the prospect of tricking the Radcliffs. I, on the other hand, felt a mix of excitement and trepidation. I knew that our idea wasn’t a very nice one and I was a person who tried to be nice. Even to people who weren’t nice to me.

           We searched surreptitiously in the basement storage room, trying not to attract the attention of Stewie, who would spoil any chances we had of doing anything. Nor did we want Debbie’s mother to find us down there. We didn’t want to get caught doing something we would have to lie about. Sneaking was bad, but it carried a less severe penalty than lying. We heard Mrs. Carter at the top of the basement stairs, humming.

           “That you down there, Debbie?” she asked. “You girls better go on outside now and enjoy the sunshine.” We held our breath and tried hard not to laugh. But the danger was over. We could hear Mrs. Carter back in the kitchen, and she wasn’t a great one for following up on things.

           “Hey, I found it!” Debbie cried out with the unexpected success of her searching. “Come on.”

           Hearts pounding, we crossed over her lawn, up the little hill that went the reverse direction on her side of the street and over the cement road with the black seams of oozy tar, not stopping to squish our bare toes in the wide, inviting parts. We kind of hid the birthday cake pedestal between us, but it was, conveniently, one of those perfect quiet moments in which nothing and no one stirred. We moved as close as we could to the little stone wall that separated our yard from the Radcliffs. It was sheltered and shady in there beneath the lilac tree, but almost impossible to see if Mrs. Radcliff’s bedroom window was open, and entirely impossible to see if anyone was actually in there.

           “Play it!” whispered Shannon. Debbie removed the cake stand from a dusty plastic wrapper and turned the silver turnkey at the side. The winding sounded frighteningly loud in our ears. My heart was pounding. There was no sound coming from the Radcliff’s house, nor from ours, fortunately. I was thinking that maybe we should just leave it, but just then Debbie finished winding and the sounds of a tinny “Happy Birthday” began to play at a louder volume than we expected. We froze, astounded at our audacity.

           Suddenly we could hear voices from the Radcliff’s open bedroom window.

           “Janice, is that the ice-cream truck? Lemme give you some money soas you can get us all some ice-cream. Bertie! You want some ice-cream?”

           We looked at each other, eyes filled with panic, grabbed the birthday cake pedestal while it was still playing and ran as fast as ice sliding down your back on a hot summer day round into my backyard, where we surprised my mother gardening and my baby sister taking an unplanned nap in the playpen where she had been stacking plastic cups.

           “Shh,” my mother warned without looking up from her weeding, “Janie’s sleeping.”

           We collapsed in a heap of heartbeats and giggles and lay around in the safety of my backyard, away from prying eyes and nonexistent ice-cream trucks, ‘til one by one we all got called home for dinner. We never found out what happened that day when Janice went outside and discovered that the ice-cream truck had not come after all. And I never forgot that feeling of power at taking on Mrs. Radcliff and winning.