Little Red Lies (22 page)

“Oh, she’s lovely all right. She just ran away from home. Our parents will be frantic.”

“She phone home. I hear it all.”

Jamie scowls at me and asks, “What did they say?”

“That I’m thoughtless and irresponsible. They were really mad, shouting, even.” Velda, my witness, nods in agreement. “But then they calmed down. Dad was home for lunch. He said he’d come and get me as soon as he felt all right about leaving Mother, and I said I wanted to stay with you, so he said, ‘Okay, I’ll come tomorrow, and we’ll talk about this.’ ”

“What did Mother say?”

“That I’m a burden to her. That she’s in a delicate condition; that I have no heart; that she hopes I packed warm clothes. Let’s see, what else? That I’ll be the death of her. That’s about it.”

“Well, well, ancient history, now,” Velda says. “Come
back for dinner, bring sister. A big feast tonight, plenty of food for all. Come at six. I open very good wine. My niece, Opal, enjoy to come, too. ‘You come meet a nice young man for a change,’ I tell her.”

“Okay, we can come.” I don’t even look at Jamie for confirmation. I’m hungry. “Thanks,” I remember to say.

Back in his apartment, Jamie clutches his head as if he’s trying to hold his brain in place. His usually neat hair stands on end, making him look hopelessly deranged. The cat occupies the chair as if she’s its rightful owner. She looks at Jamie archly, licks a paw, scratches an ear, and settles in for a nap.

“Why is there a cat here?” he says.

“I don’t know. She followed me from the station.”

“It probably belongs to somebody.”

“Of course she does. She belongs to me, but I’m giving her to you. My compliments. Her name is Rose.”

“I don’t want a cat.” He turfs Rose out of the chair and sits down. The cat jumps back up to settle in his lap.

“See? She loves you.”

Hands on the chair arms, refusing to touch the cat, Jamie says, in his most put-upon voice, “Okay, okay, now tell me what happened. Why did you leave home?”

“Your
parents don’t trust me. Ruthie thinks I have a boyfriend and wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t, so I made up a story that I was running away with him.
Mother overheard and wouldn’t believe that I just made it up.” This was very close to the truth, without being one hundred percent true. “So I got mad and yelled at them. I really needed you to be on my side, but you weren’t there.”

“I don’t get it.”

“And I’m going to fail all my exams because I missed so much school when I was sick.”

“Maybe you’re sick in the head.”

“And,” I take a big breath, “I want to escape from … some of the teachers, from the way they keep breathing down my neck. If I could live with you and go to school in Toronto, like my friend Hazel, my problems would disappear. As soon as Hazel moved in with her grandmother, hers did.”

He keeps his scowl in place, but I watch him stroking the cat’s soft coat and think that if he could just do that for a while, he’d agree.

“You can’t escape problems, you know. You have to confront them. How did you get here?”

“The train. Paid for from my savings. And then I asked people for directions.”

“You talked to total strangers?”

“No, idiot, first we introduced ourselves and exchanged life histories.”

He grunts, not amused. “Well, what am I supposed to do with you, now that you’re here? We could go to the museum, I guess.”

“Nope. First things first. Get your coat, we’re going shopping.”

Jamie accompanies me reluctantly, first to a hardware store, then to a grocery store. I manage to fast-talk him into buying a litter box and sand and six cans of cat food. “In one end and out the other,” I say.

“Do you think you could be a little less explicit?”

“Might as well face facts.”

We lug the stuff back to his apartment, where Rose mews us a brief greeting before curling up again. “Look what we bought for you, Rose,” I say, “a brand-new toilet.”

She responds by licking her chest.

Even though I’m starving, I feel we have to do things right. After all, we’re in the big city. “We can’t turn up for dinner at Velda’s too early,” I say. “We have to wait until at least five after six, to be fashionably late.”

“There’s not a lot of fashion going on at Velda’s,” Jamie says.

But at one minute past six, my stomach roars,
Time to go
.

Velda does not disappoint in the food department. The aroma of garlic and onions that seeped into Jamie’s apartment all afternoon now greets us in her large kitchen. I’ve never seen so much food all at one time, except at a church banquet.

“Are other people coming?” I ask, gazing at the dishes and platters heaped high.

“My niece comes, after work, maybe.”

Even for four, there is too much—two whole chickens swimming in gravy, half a baked ham, sausages, a steaming casserole that looks unappetizing but smells wonderful, a mountain of boiled potatoes, three dishes of vegetables whose names I’ve never even heard before.

Velda booms out her exuberant laugh. “All for my young cavalier and his lady-sister.” She pinches Jamie’s cheek and gives his head a shake. “We fatten you up nice, just like the witch in fairy tale. Sit, sit! Cold food no use.”

We sit at Velda’s enormous kitchen table. She carves off a chicken leg and some breast meat for us and begins to fork slabs of ham onto both our plates.

“No, no,” Jamie says, “I can’t possibly eat that much.”

“What? You think my cooking is no good? Huh! In the old country, friends know how to eat. Look at you, James. Look at your waist, tiny like a girl’s.”

He puts small amounts of vegetables onto his plate to accompany the meat, but Velda scoops on more. “Oh!” She reaches for a bottle of wine on the sideboard behind her. “Most important of all.” She pours a healthy tumbler of red wine for Jamie. “Taste it,” she says.

He takes a sip and nods. “Not bad.” She’s about to pour one for me, but he puts his hand over my glass. “She’s too young.”

“Piff-puff!” Velda blows the remark away. “It’s harmless. A drink for babies in old country.”

Jamie seems to find the wine easier to enjoy than the
dinner. Velda pours him another glass. When he isn’t looking, I take a large gulp from his glass. It tastes like medicine.

Just then a young woman bustles in—Velda’s niece. She throws off her coat, drapes it on a chair, and sits down at the table. She’s beautiful, with red hair ornately piled on top of her head. Her eyes are a heavenly blue, set off by the longest, thickest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. Her name is Opal. Jamie stands up to shake her hand and says, “James McLaren. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

I stare hard at him, because what he says sounds like
Pleased to mash your potatoes
.

Opal helps herself to gobs of meat, potatoes, vegetables—in short, everything edible—douses it all with salt and pepper, and forks it down as if it’s her personal last supper. Velda pours more wine. It really is a delicious meal, I think, as I take another slug of Jamie’s wine. Velda tells us more about the old country, about how her family was rich until bad men robbed them of all their wealth. I could listen to her stories all night.

“Where do you work, Opal?” Jamie asks.

She holds up her finger for him to wait. It takes her a moment to swallow her mouthful. Velda answers for her. “Like a nurse only different.”

“In a hospital?”

“She works for private,” Velda says.

“I was in a hospital,” Jamie says.

“You are sick?” Velda asks.

“Nope, not anymore. I’m all better.”

“He’s been faith healed.” I try to sound convincing.

They smile, surprised. Opal asks, “What did you have?”

“I was just down a pint or two of blood,” he says, looking darkly at me. A warning. “But the doctor topped me up, and now I’m right as rain.”

Velda and Opal drink to his continued good health. Jamie stands up, glass raised high. He thanks them and tries to toast their good health, but he loses his balance. Falling back into his chair, he says something like, “Words cannot express,” and sits smiling, like a sultan in his harem. At least he refuses more wine.

We barely get finished the dessert pastries, when Jamie staggers to his feet and pulls back my chair. “Time we were going, Ladies. Delightful evening, but it’s my sister’s bedtime. Most enjoyable dinner.”

I think he sounds pompous, but I guess it’s the effect of the wine.

“What? So early?” Velda says. “Why not let sister stay with me? No problem, I keep an eye on her. You have no proper space up there. She can sleep in extra bed in my place, all cozy and nice.”

Jamie says, “She can have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor.” He pushes me ahead of him out the door.

Velda stands in the doorway, folded arms propped on her shelf, shaking her head. “No, no, no! Bad for your health. Why did God give us beds, I ask? Not so we can
sleep on floors.” Opal appears beside her. Velda looks over her shoulder. “Or Opal will take her in.”

“Nope,” Opal says. “I’m a working girl. I need my beauty sleep.”

Jamie is dragging me up the stairs by the arm. “Thanks, anyway. We’ll be fine.”

I twist around and call, “Thanks for dinner. It was really delicious!”

Inside his apartment, I complain loudly that he’s being an obnoxious bore, that we could have stayed a little longer, that there was a plate of chocolate cake we didn’t even get to. Rose meows, agreeing with me.

Jamie ignores us both. He hands me the bag I brought and hustles me into the bathroom to get ready for bed. His bedroom, initially an alcove in some earlier, grander part of the house’s existence, has no door.

In my pajamas, now, I watch him throw back the covers, brush out a few toast crumbs, and grab one of the two pillows and the extra blanket from the foot of his bed. In a moment, I patter across and climb into bed. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“On the chair, if Rose will allow me.”

I watch him turn out the main light and feel his way back to the chair. I can make out his silhouette slouched there, pillow behind his back, his legs stretched out in front. He flips the blanket over them.

In a few minutes, he says, “Are you asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you have to bring up that thing about being faith healed?”

“I don’t know. Something to say.”

“Well, it’s nobody’s business.”

“I know. But I was just wondering something.”

“What?” He sounds wary.

“Now that you’re cured, why did you blame Mother for replacing you with a new baby?”

“Go to sleep, Rachel.”

“I was just wondering.”

He puts his head back and pretends to be asleep, snoring like a large motor in need of repairs. He slings his long legs over one arm of the chair. The next time I look, he’s propped them on another chair. I watch the cat, on the prowl, leap onto his shoulder to purr in his ear and lick his stubbly cheek with her raspy tongue. Eventually my busy day catches up to me, and I sleep.

I awake to spring sunlight and my brother softly snoring. He has moved in beside me on top of the blanket and is curled up like a snail. A moment later, he’s awake and staring into my eyes as if he can’t remember who I am.

I say, “Doesn’t this remind you of when I was little and used to cry in the night when I had a bad dream and you
came and lay down beside me and told me nursery rhymes to make them go away? Tell me one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Come on.”

After a moment, he says, “The only one I can think of is ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall …’ ”

I sit up. “Don’t say that one. I hate it!”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“He dies!”

“For Pete’s sake, he’s just an egg. C’mon, get up. We’ll go out somewhere to have breakfast. You can have a dead egg.”

The coffee tastes like wet sawdust, and my leathery fried eggs have been dead for weeks. I watch Jamie nibbling on toast as if he’s trying to avoid swallowing. My spirits are so low, they drag on the floor. I will soon have to face my father. I don’t want to go back home. Leaning on my elbows, I say, “I need to talk to you about something important.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I want to come and live here with you. I mean, I can go to school here as easily as in Middleborough. You could find a nicer place, big enough for two.”

“Don’t be insane.”

“Look, school is awful. If I could move in with you and go to a different one, I could escape.”

“Escape from what?”

“I don’t mean escape. I just need a breather, a chance to think about the way my life is going.”

“It
is
about some boy, isn’t it?”

“More or less.”

“Don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Whatever temptation is causing your problems with schoolwork, don’t give in. Don’t do it.”

I want to tell him how I feel about Mr. Tompkins, but the disturbed look on his face changes my mind. He’d be shocked. He wouldn’t understand. Even I don’t understand how I can be both attracted and repelled by the same person. I long for Tommy, day and night, and hate myself for it, day and night. I need out.

“We’d better go back. Dad will be here to pick you up pretty soon.”

“I know, but why can’t I stay with you?”

“Because you need someone to keep a close eye on you, to guide you, and I can’t always do that. Mother and Dad have to do that.”

“Mother and Dad are in a world of their own, with no idea what it’s like to be me. All they think about is their future little bundle of joy. I want to move out. If I stay at home, I’ll end up as a convenient babysitter.” I let out a
big anguished sigh. “I hate my life so much. I wish everything could go back to the way it was.”

He puts down his half-drunk coffee and gazes sadly out the window. “Wouldn’t that be nice!” He pays the bill and we leave.

The sun does its best to warm us in spite of a raw spring wind as we trudge back to the apartment.

“Maybe it will be born dead,” Jamie says.

Shocked, I pull him to a halt. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“I’m a horrible guy.”

“Is that what you hope, that the baby dies?”