“She sounds like a sensible person. You’ll do it that way?”
“I’ll do it just that way, Danny.”
‘Good.” I picked up the battered envelope. “Picky, I told you I had to go away. I have to go away for a very long time.”
“How long?”
“Thirty years.”
Her eyes grew wider if possible. At eleven, thirty years is not a long time; it’s forever. I added, “I’m sorry, Ricky. But I have to.”
“Why?”
I could not answer that one. The true answer was unbelievable and a lie would not do. “Picky, it’s much too hard to explain. But I have to. I can’t help it.” I hesitated, then added, “I’m going to take the Long Sleep. The cold sleep-you know what I mean.”
She knew. Children get used to new ideas faster than adults do; cold sleep was a favorite comic-book theme. She looked horrified and protested, “But, Danny, I’ll never see you again~”
“Yes, you will. It’s a long time but I’ll see you again. And so will Pete. Because Pete is going with me; he’s going to cold-sleep too.”
She glanced at Pete and looked more woebegone than ever.
“But-Danny, why don’t you and Pete just come down to Brawley and live with us? That would be ever so much better. Grandma will like Pete. She’ll like you too-she says there’s nothing like having a man around the house.”
“Ricky. . . dear Ricky. . . I have to. Please don’t tease me.” I started to tear open the envelope.
She looked angry and her chin started to quiver. “I think she has something to do with this!”
“What? If you mean Belle, she doesn’t. Not exactly, anyway.”
“She’s not going to cold-sleep with you?”
I think I shuddered. “Good heavens, not I’d run miles to avoid her.”
Picky seemed slightly mollified. “You know, I was so mad at you about her. I had an awful outrage.”
“I’m sorry, Ricky. I’m truly sorry. You were right and I was wrong. But she hasn’t anything to do with this. I’m through with her, forever and forever and cross my heart. Now about this.” I held up the certificate for all that I owned in Hired Girl, Inc. “Do you know what it is?”
I explained it to her. “I’m giving this to you, Picky. Because I’m going to be gone so long I want you to have it.” I took the paper on which I had written an assignment to her, tore it up, and put the pieces in my pocket; I could not risk doing it that way-it would be too easy for Belle to tear up a separate sheet and we were not yet out of the woods. I turned the certificate over and studied the standard assignment form on the back, trying to plan how to work it in the Bank of America in trust for- “Ricky, what is your full name?”
“Frederica Virginia. Frederica Virginia Gentry. You know.”
“Is it ‘Gentry’? I thought you said Miles had never adopted you?”
“Oh! I’ve been Picky Gentry as long as I can remember. But you mean my real name. It’s the same as Grandma’s … the same as my real daddy’s. Heinicke. But nobody ever calls me that.”
“They will now.” I wrote “Frederica Virginia Heinicke” and added “and to be reassigned to her on her twenty-first birthday” while prickles ran down my spine-my original assignment might have been defective in any case.
I started to sign and then noticed our watchdog sticking her head out of the office. I glanced at my wrist, saw that we had been talking an hour; I was running out of minutes.
But I wanted it nailed down tight. “Ma’am!”
“Yes?”
“By any chance, is there a notary public around here? Or must I find one in the village?”
“I am a notary. What do you wish?”
“Oh, good! Wonderful! Do you have your seal?”
“I never go anywhere without it.”
So I signed my name under her eye and she even stretched a point (on Ricky’s assurance that she knew me and Pete’s silent testimony to my respectability as a fellow member of the fraternity of cat people) and used the long form: “-known to me personally as being said Daniel B. Davis-” When she embossed her seal through my signature and her own I sighed with relief. Just let Belle try to find a way to twist that one!