Just Like Tippy
When I saw my Aunt Tippy at the top of the library ladder I thought she was just taking a nap. I didn’t know she was dead. One time I found Tippy asleep on the step-stool in the pantry. Another time she was dead to the world on the bathroom floor. So when I found Tippy sitting on one of the ladder’s top steps with her eyes closed and her head leaning to the side, just like the Morning People on the subway, it didn’t seem so strange to me. All I thought was how neat it was that Tippy’s neck and the scarf she had tied around it were the same color as the periwinkle crayon in my box of sixty-four.
Tippy looked tired. Her mouth was open a little and her tongue was hanging to the side like our mutt Rebel’s does when he’s worn-out from playing catch with me and my brother, Hoppy. I thought the ladder was a pretty weird place to take a nap, but I’m ten and I still don’t know too much about grownups anyway besides what I hear when I sit on the stairs during one of Mom and Dad’s cocktail parties or when I go to Mom’s office in the basement and listen outside the door when she’s helping one of her patients with a problem.
I’m not supposed to listen when Mom’s in there with one of her Office People. That’s what I call Mom’s patients. Mom says I called them that ever since I was little. Dad works at a bank across the bridge in the city and he calls the Office People head cases. I made a note in my book to ask him about that later.
Tippy being dead kinda makes sense now. No wonder my dad yelled “What the hell are you doing?” when he came in to Tippy’s library and saw me sitting there reading, like always. Dad made the same face then that he did the time one of my experiments went wrong and I burned my eyebrows by accident. Dad looked mad and worried and surprised all at the same time. I remember because he swore that time, too, and he usually only swears when he thinks I’m not listening or doesn’t know I’m around.
I learned a few new words that day. I remember because I keep a list of words in my notebook. Not this one. The one I write all my findings and observings and stuff I don’t really understand yet in. Mom wants me to write everything about when I found Tippy in this new notebook. And she said her friend Dr. Medavoy could help me, too, when I’m done writing everything down. To help me figure things out, like a puzzle. We do puzzles a lot, me and Tippy. All kinds. She even makes up her own with special rules to follow and pictures she draws herself.
Tippy really likes her rules, even if maybe not everybody else does. That’s why it’s so weird that Tippy was breaking her own rules and messing with the books on the top shelf when she died. There are seven shelves in Tippy’s bookcases and it was Saturday, and the rule is you worked on the bottom shelves on Saturday and if Tippy was breaking her own rules she had to have a good reason. I just have to find out what it is. I like rules too. That way everybody’s treated the same. And it‘s Tippy’s house anyhow.
Granma Blanche and Tippy are sisters and they live next door to each other on Glenwood Road in Brooklyn. Dad said that a long time ago both houses belonged to Granma Blanche and Tippy’s mom and dad. My dad called them Nana and Papa. When they died, one house went to Tippy and one to Granma Blanche. That happened before I was born. I didn’t know Nana and Papa, but they must have been pretty nice people to give away a couple of houses. But Dad said they gave Tippy a house because no man would have Tippy and her strange ways, and the family wanted to make sure Tippy wouldn’t wind up on the dole. I asked Dad what that was and he said it’s when you get something for nothing, like charity. When I said isn’t that what giving Tippy the house was like anyway, Dad told me it was grownup business and to go read a book.
I like reading. It’s a good thing, too, because people are always telling me to go read a book. And I like going to Tippy’s big, quiet house that’s full of books. The stoop has just the right number of steps, 7, there’s a chair in the library that faces the right way, and Tippy lets me read any of her books as long as I follow the rules. She has rules about her books and dirt and stuff. Once Tippy nearly took Granpa’s head off when he forgot to shake the doormat into the garden, after he wiped his feet and before coming into the foyer, where you’re supposed to wipe your feet again before coming into the parlor.
She uses words like foyer and parlor, Tippy does. In my house Mom and Dad call them the hall and the living room. I remember Dad saying once that having money changed rooms quicker than a new coat of paint, and then he said something about putting on airs. Dad didn’t know I was listening from the third step and when I asked him if Tippy used the airs to dry the paint, I wound up finishing the last three chapters of Huckleberry Finn.
It sounds so stupid now, that I didn’t know Tippy was dead. Everybody says I’m such a smart kid, just like Tippy was when she was my age. She’s always telling Granma Blanche “William may have the muscles, but Katharine has the brains, but she should spend more time with me to smooth those rough edges.”
William is Hoppy’s real name. We call him “Hoppy” because my mom says he hopped before he walked. She says he sat on his bottom and used one arm to bump along the floor. I wasn’t there, because Hoppy is eight years older than me, so I’ll have to take their words for it, but I’ve seen pictures, so I guess it’s true. Granma’s older than Tippy and started calling her that because Tippy used to stand on her toes all the time.
I’m Katharine, the one that Tippy wants to take the sandpaper to. Everybody calls me Kat. Unless they’re mad or I messed up an experiment again. Then they call me Katharine Celeste. The kids in my new class at school tried calling me “Kitty” because I’m the youngest kid in the class and a kitten is a baby cat. I told them I like Kat better, because it has three letters. They said that was stupid and I told them that if I was stupid they were too, because Mom and Dad said I was gonna be in a class with kids like me this year. Older kids and some that skipped a grade like me, too. Jeez I hope they don’t try calling me Skippy next. Just wait till they hear about this. That I didn’t know Tippy was dead. Like I need another reason to be treated different.
Tippy always called me Katharine so I figure that means she’s only halfway mad at me all the time. Probably because my edges aren’t right. And Tippy likes her edges to be right. One time Hoppy borrowed a book and put it back and didn’t make sure it was lined up with the marks Tippy has on the shelves that the books have to touch so they’ll all be straight and he had to promise like a million times it wouldn’t happen again before she’d let him borrow another book.
Mom says Tippy being dead is an accident. She says that Tippy’s favorite scarf got caught in between the rail and the top wheels of the ladder when she was reaching for a book on the top shelf, and when Tippy slipped the knot got so tight around her neck she couldn’t breathe. I’m glad that at least she was wearing her favorite scarf when it happened, but what I can’t figure out is what Tippy was doing on the top of the ladder in the first place. Whenever I have a problem with a puzzle Tippy always says, “Katharine, find your beginning and start there.”
Before I found Tippy, me, Mom, Dad, and my big brother, Hoppy, were visiting Granma Blanche and Granpa Stuart to celebrate Hoppy’s football scholarship to college. I guess he also won a free trip somewhere, too, because everybody kept saying the scholarship was Hoppy’s ticket out of Vietnam. I’ll have to check my regular notebook about that. I thought he was going to Ohio.
I was bored out of my skull at Granma and Granpa’s house, so I went out the front door and down the right side of the front steps, like I always do, and I didn’t touch the front lawn because Granpa has rules, too. And I was really careful not to step more than three times in one sidewalk square on the way over to Tippy’s. That’s one of my rules.
On Tippy’s porch I took the key out from under the third flowerpot, the one with the red flowers. There are always red flowers. Geraniums or those funny-sounding Christmas flowers I can never remember how to spell. Point-somethings. I’ll have to make a note to check on that.
I opened the front door and put the key back under the pot and made sure that I didn’t spill any of the dirt on the brick steps. Then I wiped my feet, shook out the mat, put the mat back, wiped my feet again and pushed the big wood and glass door open into the front hall.
The library is on the right side of the house and has these big double-doors and that’s where Tippy spends most of her time, dusting her books, making sure they’re all lined up the right way. Moving them around by size or by color, depending on what day it is. The big bookcases have seven shelves and that works out real great because there’s seven days in the week so each shelf has its own day.
Tippy didn’t answer me when I called her name, so I took off my Hush Puppies, put them together on the mat, facing out towards the street like Tippy says. Then I went into the library and saw why Tippy didn’t answer me. She was kind of sitting on the book ladder. I thought she got tired of pushing the ladder around the room because it’s made of wood and pretty heavy, even with the wheels on the bottom that roll on the floor and the ones at the top that move on the rail around the room. The bookshelves go from the floor to the ceiling. I figured Aunt Tippy decided to sit awhile and fell asleep.
But now that I think about it I don’t think that Tippy’s feet were really touching the ladder’s steps. Her left foot kinda pointed down and the right one was kinda bent back like it got caught or something.
I didn’t know she was dead so I got three pillows and piled them up so I could put my feet on them like I always do and sat down in my favorite chair. It’s the one I always sit in when I go over to visit Tippy and her books, the chair that’s exactly three feet back from the middle of the big window that faces Glenwood Road. Tippy says she wants me to read To Kill a Mockingbird because I remind her of Scout and since I keep hearing people say how much I’m like Tippy, I guess Tippy was like Scout, too, when she was a kid. So that’s where I was and what I was doing when Dad came in looking for me and Tippy.
I heard Dad calling my name as soon as he came into Tippy’s house because the ceiling in the foyer is two floors high and it has a really neat echo. I was gonna holler back but Granma Blanche is always telling me that young ladies don’t raise their voices. I guess she didn’t see those ladies on TV setting fire to their underwear. I heard Dad’s friends at the last party call the ladies Women’s Libbers. I didn’t yell back when Dad came in to Tippy’s house, but not because I was trying to be a young lady but because I didn’t want to wake up Tippy because I didn’t know she was dead.
I put my pointer finger on my lips to tell him to be quiet, but I guess Dad figured out what was wrong with Tippy pretty quick because the next thing I know he’s making the Experiment Face I wrote about before and acting like Fred Flintstone. Dad threw me over his shoulder and ran out of Tippy’s house. We were going so fast that Dad even forgot Granpa’s rule about keeping off the grass and I was bouncing up and down like crazy trying to hold on to Tippy’s book.
I yelled “Daddy, we have to go back! Aunt Tippy doesn’t let her books outta the house! And she’s gonna be mad to begin with because you didn’t take off your shoes. And what about my shoes? They’re still on the mat. Tippy doesn’t like it when there are extra shoes in the house!”
Daddy said, “It doesn’t matter what Tippy wants anymore. She’s dead.”
When me and Dad got back to Granma and Granpa’s house and Dad told everybody what happened Granpa and Hoppy went over to Tippy’s and I went to Granpa Stuart’s study to lay on the rug and write stuff in my regular notebook like I always do. Dad, Mom, and Granma Blanche came in and started talking about me like I wasn’t there. I like when grownups do that.
Mom was mad at Dad about something. Maybe because Dad was behind Granpa’s bar drinking right out of the bottle. The rule is you always use a glass. Granma Blanche must have been mad too because she used all three of Dad’s names when she talked to him. “Spencer Tracy Cassidy!” she said. And then Dad said something about not lying to me, that I was too smart, and then Mom said something like it doesn’t matter what my IQ is or that I skipped a grade or two because I’m still a ten year-old little girl who found her aunt hanging in a place she always felt safe in.
Mom was talking in her Office Voice. It’s the voice she uses when she answers the black phone on her desk in her office. The phone that has buttons in rows of threes on it. I like that phone. But I don’t think Dad liked it much because he swore again and said something about shrink crap, the sewer, and me not even knowing Tippy was dead when I found her. Maybe Dad said something else after that but I’m not sure because I was busy straightening the tassel things on Granma Blanche’s rug because they were all crooked and when I looked up Mom, Dad, and Granma Blanche were all staring at me.
Later me and Mom were in Granma’s kitchen eating Lorna Doones and milk and that’s when Mom told me what she thinks happened to Tippy.
“It was an accident,” she said. Mom held my hands so tight and her face was so close I could see where the red lipstick ran into the lines around her mouth, like it was trying to escape so it wouldn’t wind up on her teeth the way it always did.
“It was an accident,” she said again and told me all about the scarf and the ladder and the wheels and the railing. It all came out in such a whoosh of words that I don’t think Mom breathed even once in the middle. I wasn’t really paying attention because I wanted to go back to the study and finish fixing the rug. That’s when I remembered it was Saturday.
I asked Mom what Tippy was doing breaking her own rules and messing with the books on the top shelf on a Saturday. Mom said she didn’t know but that Tippy must have had a good reason and that like I told Mom before it was Tippy’s house and they were Tippy’s rules and we should just accept that Tippy had a good reason for doing what she did. Then Mom asked me how I was feeling and if there was anything else I’d like to talk about. I told her I just wanted to figure out what was so interesting on the top shelf that made Tippy break the rules. Mom told me to go read a book.
I was reading about Scout and her big brother, Jem, when people I don’t know started bringing casseroles and bottles over to Granma and Granpa’s house and saying they were sorry about Tippy. I don’t think any of them did anything to Tippy so I don’t know what they were apologizing for. I asked a couple Casserole and Bottle People if they knew why Tippy was on the ladder on a Saturday. Both of them looked at me kind of the same way Dad did in the library so I figured they didn’t know why and were trying to figure it out too. I said thank you anyway and that I was gonna do one of my experiments and when I figured it out I would make sure Granma and Granpa let them know why Tippy was on the top of ladder when she had her accident. I wanted to ask someone why people kept calling it a wake when Tippy wasn’t asleep and wouldn’t be waking up ever again but before I could Mom told Hoppy it was almost time for him to take me home.
Most of the time writing things down helps me understand stuff. Mom says that’s how a lot of her Office People figure out their problems. I know I’m smart, so I should be able to figure out this whole Tippy thing. And the thing about the wake. And why people bring casseroles over when people die. I know there’s some other stuff I don’t understand, but I’ll just write it down in my other notebook since Mom said just to write Aunt Tippy stuff in this one. That’s the rule. Tippy broke the rules and look what happened.
When I was fixing the rug in Granpa Stuart’s study, I remember Mom told Dad she was gonna show my Tippy notebook to her friend Dr. Medavoy. Mom thinks Dr. Medavoy can help me find out why Tippy broke the rules and died, but I’m gonna find my own beginning and go over to Tippy’s house and see if I can figure it out by myself. I have to bring the Mockingbird book back, anyway. It’s still Saturday, so it’s okay. But first I have to get my notebook and then I have to find a blue scarf, just like Tippy’s.
Just Like Tippy is a 3,256 word short story which, after being workshopped at the Yale Writers' Conference, has decided to become a mystery novella, set in 1969 Brooklyn, and whose protagonist is a 10 year-old girl who today would be considered Aspergian. In order to understand the loss of her Aunt Tippy, Kat follows the rules (and Aunt Tippy's clues) to deal with the unanswered questions about Tippy's life, her family, and her death. Appealing to anyone who likes an intriguing piece with offbeat characters and an intelligent, albeit unusual, point of view, Just Like Tippy is just the right combination of character- and plot-driven text whose storyline is anything but straight.
Tippy's author is writer and editor, Carol Dowd-Forte, M.A., President of "A Girl's Gotta Eat: Writing and Editing for a Price" and a former stringer for The Miami Herald, who is authoring her own coming-of-middle-age tale. After a couple of decades of getting paid to write anything and everything for other people, she headed to grad school for her Master of Arts in Writing, at 49, and graduated in 2012, at 51. She’s a Mensa member, is founder of The Alley (a writers' support group), and has been an invited attendee of Yale University's Summer Writers' Conference and Workshop since its inception.
Born in Queens, she was a tomboy when “female athlete” was considered an oxymoron, was one of the first female graduates of St. Thomas University’s Sports Administration Program (’82), and began her thirty-year trek to overnight success in television sports. She’s done a TEDx Talk (A Perimenopausal Blonde Walks Into a University... http://youtu.be/UjSr-US3l_E ), performed stand-up comedy at The Improv at the Hard Rock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doU94Nehr_Y), swam in Jeopardy!’s contestant pool, hates the color pink, and has never ridden a school bus or eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A former coach, trainer, and marathoner, she's still an athlete, regularly exercising her inner child. Before becoming a writer, she was a fetus.