Little Red Lies (25 page)

“Oh,” says the janitor, from the stage. “Thought you’d all gone home.”

“We’re just leaving,” Mr. Tompkins says. He opens the door and ushers me out, ahead of him. In the corridor, there are other people—teachers.

“Tompkins,” someone says. “You missed the meeting.”

Mr. Tompkins slams his hand against his forehead. “This blasted play completely knocked it out of my head. You’ll have to fill me in.” He catches up to the other teachers without so much as a glance in my direction.

Inside me, something bigger than a balloon deflates. Something the size of a heart shatters.

Walking home alone, the sun sinking behind indigo clouds, I know what I need. I have to know exactly where I stand with Tommy and how much, if anything, I mean to him. I need to see him alone, without fear of being disturbed.
Yeah, sure
. Nothing like asking for the impossible.

Early the next evening, I hear a car door slam in front of our house. When I look out, there’s Jamie and a taxi driver, hauling cardboard cartons of books from the taxi and depositing them on the front steps. I’m outside to help, in a flash. No chance to hug him because he says, “Hey, kiddo, grab a box.”

We finish just as the front door opens cautiously, revealing Mother’s startled eyes, peering into the dusk. “Jamie?” The overhead light goes on, and Dad appears behind her. “It’s Jamie,” she says, with more relief than surprise. “Your father and I have been frantic with worry!”

I can tell by the way Jamie clenches and unclenches his jaw that he’s trying to prevent her getting on his nerves, even before he walks into the house. He greets her lightheartedly. “Hi, Mother.” Soon Granny’s there, too. Mother tries to put her arms around him, but her girth gets in the way.

“We put in a long-distance call to Velda’s,” she says, “but the phone has been disconnected. We’ve been just frantic.”

Ignoring her, he hands a box to Dad, who sets it down in the front hall. I rush around checking the boxes. “What about Rose? Where is she?”

“She escaped.”

“You didn’t bring her?”

“Of course I brought her. Somehow she got out of her carton in the baggage car and disappeared.”

“We can’t just leave her there,” I say. “I’m going down to the station. Did you even look for her? Did you call her?”

“She’s not a dog.”

“What’s that got to do with it? I’m sure she knows her name. I’m going to look for her.”

“You’re not going to walk all the way to the station at this hour of the night,” my mother says.

“I’ll drive her,” Granny says.

“Mother,” Dad says to Granny, “stop courting martyrdom. I’ll drive her.”

Jamie: “I’ll drive her, for Pete’s sake.”

Mother: “You’ll do no such thing. You’re not well enough.”

Jamie: “Pass me the keys, Dad.”

“Oh, dear.” Mother frowns, putting a hand on her abdomen. “Oh, dear.” With a look of panic, Dad leads her indoors.

“Get in the truck, Rachel,” Granny says. “I’m driving.”

She goes into the house to fetch her keys, quite happily leaving Dad to deal with his wife’s
oh, dears
, not to mention the sea of boxes and pieces of luggage in the front hall. She backs out of the driveway, at high speed, with Jamie and me squashed in beside her. “All this fuss over a stray cat!” she says.

“Turn on your headlights, Granny,” Jamie says.

“Aren’t they on?”

“She’s not a stray. She’s Jamie’s pride and joy.”

“Cripes, Granny. That was a stop sign.”

“Fuss, fuss, fuss! There was no one coming.”

We drive along peacefully for a time, in relative safety, until Jamie speaks as if he’s just thought of something. But, clearly, it’s been on his mind for a while. “Granny, I was wondering if you’d mind if I moved out to the farm. I could keep an eye on things while you’re staying here.”

I answer for her, with a firm “No, you may not!”

“Did I ask you?”

“We need you at home.” My voice sounds bossy, even to me. One of my worst fears: I’m turning into my mother.

“Well, dear,” Granny says calmly, now that we’ve turned onto Station Street and there are no more stop signs to miss. “I’d like to be able to let you do that, but I’ve got a young couple living there right now. They’re renting for the time being, but I think they’ll likely want to buy the farm come fall. And it’s time I sold. I’m either too old or too lazy to run the place the way I used to. I can’t decide which.”

Jamie peers past me to clearly see her face. “You can’t just sell the farm, Granny. You need that place. And I need that place. It’s part of all of us.”

I know what he means. I felt the same way, when she first told us she was renting it. We used to go with Dad, almost every summer weekend of our childhood, to help with the chores.

“It would be like an amputation to sell the farm to some stranger,” he says, his voice catching. He turns his head away. In a quieter voice, he says, “I thought it would be a good place for me to get my strength back to normal.”

“I’m sorry, love. The opportunity arose, and I took it.”

“So, who’s living there, now?”

“Prepare yourself,” I say.

“It’s that old girlfriend of yours, Mary Foley. Armstrong, she is now—a good Protestant name, not one her mother approves of, though, apparently.”

“Mary Foley got married?”

“Had to,” I pipe up.

“What do you mean, she had to? As in, actually, you know, had to?”

“Precisely,” I say. “Not as if she could hide it in this town.”

“To Roy Armstrong?”

“Well, I don’t hold it against them,” Granny says. “He’s a hard worker. If they’re going to have babies anyway, they might as well get a good start on it and not wait until
they’re on the verge of old age.” She gives a little cough and clears her throat. No one feels like commenting.

Jamie’s quiet. I wonder if he’s jealous. After all, Roy Armstrong succeeded where he failed. “Well,” he growls, “got to hand it to old Roy. I don’t know how he managed to get past the Blessed Mother, both blessed mothers.”

After a minute, Granny says, “Mrs. Pool over on Maple Avenue is wanting to let the upstairs of her house come fall, and I think I’ll take her up on it. I’ve no need of a big house anymore. I can rattle my bones around a small place just as easily.”

“Why don’t you just stay on living with us?” I ask.

“Oh, I’ll stay long enough to wear out my welcome. Your mother’ll be worn to a frazzle with the new baby, so I’ll help out there. As long as I’m needed, I’ll stick around. But, the minute I become irrelevant, that’s the minute it’s time to go.”

“Don’t say that, Granny,” Jamie says.

“We’ll always need you,” I say.

“When I’m a useless, toothless, mindless old hag, you’ll be saying,
Off to the bone yard with her
.”

“We will not. Don’t talk like that. You’re scaring me.”

It is no easy matter to extricate the cat from the baggage car. We get to the station a mere ten minutes before the train is to leave. Destination: Montreal. My winning ways and my threats of suicide if the stationmaster doesn’t let me into the
baggage car save the day. I call Rose gently, persuasively, and at last lure her to me, gathering her in my arms as best I can. Stiff-legged, claws out, Rose is not yet ready to let down her guard. Quickly, I hand her over to Jamie, loose cat hair flying, and she snuggles right into his chest, purring.

“Hmmph!”
I say.

“Well,” Jamie says, “well, now.” He sounds like Dad. “I think she kind of likes me.”

Our cat-rescuing party returns to find an empty house and a note on the kitchen table from Dad: “We are going to the hospital. Dora thinks the baby is on its way. I’ll get back when I can.”

“This can’t be good,” Granny says. “The baby’s not due for another two weeks.” Jamie’s eyes meet mine. We are both remembering what Jamie said as we were walking away from the breakfast restaurant in Toronto.

Rose sets off on a sightseeing roam around the house. “Put her sandbox somewhere and show it to her,” Granny says. “If that cat moves its bowels on my bed, someone’s head will roll. I mean it.”

Dad arrives just as we’re all thinking of heading for bed. “False alarm,” he says. “However, they want to keep Dora there to monitor her.”

“That will be hard on her,” Granny says, “with Jamie just arrived and the, ah, joy of having a cat in the house.”

“The baby could come anytime, they think, so they talked her into staying.” He beams a smile at each of us
as if he wants approval. It looks a bit forced to me. Jamie probably thinks he looks sheepish. Granny’s eyes are full of pity. She probably sees a man at his wit’s end.

It strikes me, suddenly, that Dad has a lot of gray in his hair and deep lines in his face.
Looks almost old enough to be a grandfather
, I think. He turns off the downstairs lights, and we all troop up to bed. Granny moves spryly on ahead, to get into and out of the bathroom before there’s a lineup.

Glancing into my parents’ bedroom before I go into my own, I can’t help thinking about the bassinet, sitting on the cedar chest, at the foot of their bed. It looks pretty small. Judging by the size of Mother, the baby’s going to be a great lump of a thing. It’ll never fit in that flimsy affair. The old crib, once Jamie’s and then mine, is in pieces, leaning against the wall in the upstairs hall. Waiting. No room at the inn, for the time being. Granny has the guest room and is here to stay for the foreseeable future. And neither Jamie nor I intend to share our rooms. Why should we? We both feel the same way about this small intruder. Some new kid who’ll try to take over.

I hear Jamie sneeze and hope he isn’t catching a cold.

The next morning at breakfast, Granny says, “I don’t like the sound of your voice, James McLaren. Are you coming down with a cold?”

“Nope.”

When I get home from school, Jamie is just getting up from a long afternoon nap. He comes out of his room, still rubbing his eyes. “I had the weirdest dream,” he says. He follows me into my room while I dump my armload of books on my desk.

“About what?”

“The war, my usual dream source. I could actually hear the enemy’s artillery. I could feel the shock waves as bombs burst, and I thought I saw spectacular fireworks as planes fell spinning from the sky. I even dreamt about Herman Visser’s mother, for some reason. She was making her way among the dead and the dying, buttoning their coats, winding scarves around their necks, pulling on mittens. Crazy stuff. And she was wearing a coat with fox furs around the collar, whose heads were alive. Their pointy jaws kept snapping at me. I was lying in the mud beside Herman, who was dying, and I couldn’t help thinking that I was dying, too. I kept trying to open my eyes, but I couldn’t.”

“What a nightmare! Don’t think about it anymore. Do you want me to recite nursery rhymes for you to help you get over it?”

“Don’t worry. I’m over it.” He still sounds a little hoarse, but he looks fine. His cheeks are pink.

At dinner, Granny says, “We’ll just leave the dishes until later, and we’ll all go and visit your mother in the maternity ward.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I have too much homework. Can’t possibly go.”

But Granny says, “If you insist upon staying late after school, then your homework has to be put off until later, too. Those are the consequences. Your mother must be lonesome in the hospital waiting for the baby. We will all go and make sure she’s comfortable.”

“And how am I supposed to study for exams?”

“By letting your famous Mr. Tompkins direct the play alone for a few weeks.”

Oops
. I must stop blathering so much, at home, about assisting Mr. Tompkins. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I grumble and push my chair back from the table.

I kiss my mother, then lean against the wall of her hospital room, with dark thoughts and a dark expression. My arms itch like crazy, but I don’t want to draw attention to this fact. I try to scratch them without being obvious. Granny, chatting pleasantly, hands Mother a couple of new magazines that she brought, and I watch Mother glance at them without interest. Jamie stands just inside the door, looking uncomfortable. Dad sits in the chair, but then offers it to Granny.

“Nice flowers,” I say, just to say something. “Where did they come from?”

“Mrs. Hall brought them,” Mother says wearily.

“I wish I’d thought to bring some,” Dad says.

“I’ve got plenty,” Mother says. “Not worth spending the money. They’ll just die.”

“How are you feeling?” Granny asks quickly.

“My back’s killing me.”

“Well, let me see if I can do something to help. I’ll go and ask a nurse for another pillow, if you like.”

“No, don’t bother. Nothing helps.” She turns the pages of a magazine without looking at them.

I need to brighten the gloom. “Don’t forget we’re putting on the play soon. It’ll be the first weekend in June. I guess you’ll be out of here by then.”

“Of course,” Mother says. She attempts a smile.

“Um,” I say, trying again. “What are we going to call the baby? I mean, have you thought up any names?”

“Names?” Mother says, as if this is a brand-new idea. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Granny busies herself with the flowers, checking the water level, picking off drooping leaves. She chatters to fill in blank spaces in the almost nonexistent conversation. “It’s a pity tulips don’t last longer in a vase. It seems a shame to pick them. But they’re lovely, aren’t they?”

I fold my arms and dig my thumbs into the folds at my elbows for a furtive scratch.

“They smell rancid,” Mother says. Granny takes them into the bathroom to change the water.

Jamie sneezes into his pocket handkerchief.

Mother looks at him closely. “Your eyes are a little dull, Jamie,” she says. “Are you catching a cold?”

“Nope.”

“When you go home, I want you to gargle with hot salt water.”

I catch his quick, agitated glance at the ceiling. “Okay,” he says.

“And Rachel … use plenty of ointment on your arms, tonight, and wrap them well with bandages so you won’t scratch in your sleep.”

If we were in the middle of the war and bombs were dropping on our house, she’d still be nattering away at us about life’s minor problems. She’d probably tell us to make our beds and tidy our rooms before they’re blown to bits. What she looks like, right now, is a large helium-filled blimp, waiting to explode.