The Truth of Me by Patricia MacLachlan

1

All About Me
    M y name is Robert. There are many Roberts before me—a family of Roberts. There are my uncles, my great-uncles, a grandfather and a great-grandfather, and on and on. I think of all those Roberts when I go to the ballpark and see a line of men waiting to go to the bathroom. All those Roberts .
    I am an only child.
    My parents call me Robert, and when they do, I feel like a child dressed up in grown-up clothing. I’d rather be called Rex or Bud or Duke.
    Once I asked them if they would please have another child.
    My mother said, “Why would we want another child? We have you.”
    How dumb is that.
    They did get me a dog from the shelter: a brown hound mix named Eleanor—Ellie for short. Ellie surprised us all by being obedient. She does everything we ask. Someone trained Ellie very well and then let her go. That makes me sad. Why would anyone do that?
    Ellie is my best friend. Actually, Jack and Lizzie from my class are good friends, too. But they have gone to summer camp, off to swim in icy lake waters on cold mornings, to go on long hikes and forget their water bottles, to make lanyard bracelets that will unravel. They would rather go to Maddy’s house with me.
    So Ellie and my grandmother Maddy are my two best friends for the summer. Most kids are best friends with their dogs. Not all kids are best friends with their grandmothers. But I am.
    My parents are musicians. My mother, I think, likes her violin better than she likes me. At least she spends more time with her violin than with me. But that is the way of musicians, Maddy tells me.
    â€œThat’s my fault, Robbie. I gave her a quarter-size fiddle when she was seven years old to keep her from telling me what to do all the time,” says Maddy.
    My father (yep, named Robert) is a composer and violist. He has four pianos. There’s a very big Steinway that I played under when I was little—I used to hide my glasses of milk there because I didn’t like milk. The milk curdled and was cleaned up by the housekeeper much later. She never told my mother. Maybe she didn’t like milk either. My father has two baby grand pianos, too, and a spinet—and a keyboard for traveling. Maddy says he is “overequipped.”
    Maddy calls me Robbie, which I like. And she makes my parents nervous because of the stories she tells.
    I make my parents nervous, too. Which is another reason I love my grandmother.
    In school we had to write a description about an actual event we witnessed. This is what I wrote about my mother auditioning a second violinist to play in her string quartet.
    AUDITION OVER
    The second violinist who auditions wears the same dress as the first violinist and, if you can believe it, the same shoes .
    The first violinist cannot stop looking at her .
    The first violinist cannot stop disliking her .
    AUDITION OVER .
    A tall Man with a sneer auditions. He makes a grand mistake. He accuses the first violinist of being “just a trifle flat .”
    AUDITION OVER .
    A small woman with the body of a Jack Russell terrier auditions .
    She hums .
    â€œYou’re humming,” says the first violinist .
    â€œI’m not.”
    â€œYou are.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    â€œYou are.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    â€œAre.”
    â€œNot.”
    â€œAre.”
    â€œNot.”
    AUDITION OVER .
    My teacher, Miss Cross, laughed a lot when she read it. But she didn’t think it was true. Often my teachers don’t think what I write is true.
    Maddy read “Audition Over” and laughed, too. But she knew it was true. She is my mother’s mother, and she knows.
    My parents don’t exactly trust Maddy. That is, they don’t trust all that she says. They whisper and murmur about her, wondering if she’s going “over the edge,” as my mother puts it. Once my mother called Maddy’s doctor, Henry, to tell him what she thought. I know all this because I know pretty