Little Red Lies (26 page)

We don’t stay long. I don’t think she wants us to.

By the next morning, Jamie definitely has a cold. Granny orders him back to bed. “And stay there until I say you can get up.”

So, that’s where he is when I get home from school. I go into his room to tell him how badly the play is going. “It’s supposed to be a comedy, but it’s about as funny as a sinking ship, all hands on board. Mr. Tompkins has to yell at everybody to get them to perk up.”

“Does that work?”

I have to stop to think. “Not really. It should. He’s a wonderful director. It’s them, really, the actors. They haven’t a clue about comedy.”

“Can’t you perk them up? You’re the assistant, aren’t you?”

Before I can tell him that “assistant director” seems to be merely another name for prompter, Granny comes
puffing up the stairs and into Jamie’s room, her eyes aglow.

“Your father called. The baby has arrived safe and sound, and your mother’s fine, too—a boy, seven pounds, seven ounces, dark hair and plenty of it.”

“What’s his name?”

“So far it’s just
the baby
. Your parents can’t agree on a name.”

It’s a week before Dad brings home Mother and a squawky little runt cocooned in a blanket, wrapped tight as a butcher’s sausage.

Jamie’s cold lingers. Everyone thinks it best if he stays in his room and keeps his germs to himself. I go in to him every day to bring him up-to-date on all the details. “She’s not nursing the baby herself because she doesn’t think her milk is any good.”

“Please,” Jamie says, “spare me the details.” He puts his nose back in the book he’s reading.

“Her milk’s dried up.”

“Out,” Jamie yells, fanning me away with the book.

“
Hee-hee-hee!
The baby has mustard-colored poop.”

“Rachel, I’m serious.”

I back away toward the door with one last detail. “I changed his diaper, and he peed straight up into the air and got me on the forehead.”

Jamie hurls the book at me, but I escape being hit and
close the door quietly behind me. Accidently waking the baby is a crime worthy of the death penalty in this house.

For once in my life, I try to do the intelligent thing. Monday morning, I tell Mr. Tompkins that I now have a baby brother, and he laughs because it seems so bizarre.

“Your mother must have been a child bride,” he says.

“I don’t know about that. All I know is, I have to go straight home after school to help out.”

“And leave me to cope with the play alone?” He looks at me with a little boy pout that almost makes me want to put
my
arms around
him
.

“Oh, well … maybe I can stay, just for a little while. I can probably manage half an hour.”

He tucks a curl behind my ear, grinning like a devil. “I have a favor to ask,” he says. He rests his hand on my shoulder, burning it to a cinder. “The high school in Henley Falls put on
Rabbit Stew
last year and will lend us some props and costumes. They have a great rocking chair—better than the junky one we have.” He bit his lip. “Could you do me a big favor?”

“Sure.”
Doesn’t he know I would do anything for him?

“I’ve borrowed a pickup truck. Will you drive over with me next Saturday to help me load the stuff? Can you do that? If we leave fairly early in the morning, we’ll be back by noon … or we could go somewhere for lunch.”

This is beginning to sound like a date. “I, um, don’t know if they’ll let me.”

“Who?”

“My parents.”

“Oh, well … I could probably get someone else.”

“But, maybe.”

“I’m not sure which costumes to borrow. It’s really you I need.” His expression is tragic, a prince about to lose his princedom, unless I come to his rescue.

Of course, I say yes. How I’ll square it at home is another question.

The baby is turning into a serious problem. He cries for part of the day and most of the night, with only brief pauses in between. Mother doesn’t have the strength to look after him and spends her days in bed, recovering from his birth. She lies in semidarkness with the blinds down, not reading, not sleeping. I picture her drifting away out to sea in a little boat.

Each day when I get home from school, Granny and I share baby duties. Sometimes Dad takes the baby and walks up and down the living room with him. He seems to have more success than anyone else at getting him to settle down. Now that Mother is staying in bed, Jamie thinks it’s about time he was over his cold. He gets up, even though he’s still coughing. Doctor Melvin makes a house call and orders Jamie back to bed until further notice. He tells
Mother to get up and look after her baby. Each ignores his advice.

Jamie stays in bed in the mornings, getting up in the early afternoons to lie on the couch in the living room. That’s where I usually find him when I return from school.

“How’s the baby?” I say.

“How would I know?”

“Haven’t you even seen him yet?”

“No, not yet. I still have a bit of a cold, so I go back to my room whenever he’s likely to make an appearance.”

Every day, we have the same exchange of words, until finally he gets annoyed. “I have no interest in seeing a baby. Squalling babies bore me.”

“He’s our little brother. And he doesn’t even have a name.”

“So call him Irony.”

He makes me so mad!

Dad returns home for lunch every day, and lately, so do I. I’m getting tired of packing the same dry old peanut butter sandwiches for myself. I notice that the first thing Dad does at noon is make his rounds, looking in on Jamie, on Mother, on the baby, in that order. By the time he gets home, Granny has already carried trays up to Mother and Jamie. He brings them back down after they’ve eaten.

“It’s hard to get used to the idea that I have two sons,” Dad says to me one day at lunchtime.

“It’s hard to get used to my mother spending her life in bed,” I say. “Why doesn’t she get up?”

“Doctor Melvin believes it’s a state of mind that some women fall into after giving birth. A depression of spirits. He thinks she’ll snap out of it soon enough, if we show patience and gently try to cheer her up.”

I sit down at the table, and Granny puts a bowl of soup in front of me. I break up crackers over the soup and stir them in. Canned soup. Granny never used to serve canned soup.

“Good,” Dad says, spooning down a hearty mouthful.

“It’s out of a can,” Granny says.

“Still, it’s quite nice, isn’t it, Rachel?”

“Um, sure.”

The baby is crying again. Dad puts his soup bowl in the sink and runs water into it. “I’ll get him,” he says.

Granny’s beginning to look ancient. Her gray hair, usually caught up in a knot at the back of her head, hangs in straggles over her ears. She looks up from her soup bowl and nods.

I hear Dad go upstairs and into the baby’s room. It’s at the back of the house, above the kitchen, formerly the sewing room. To convert it, he shoved the sewing machine against one wall and moved the ironing board down to the kitchen. He also padded the sewing table with towels for a change table and put up some shelves. Mother knit a few things for the baby before she became so apathetic and sick, fortunately, otherwise he’d be pretty chilly.

I have a hard time thinking of her as sick. A cold makes you sick, or the flu. Or leukemia. Even Jamie with his cold has more energy than she does. In fact, once he’s completely over it, I’m hoping he’ll be just like his old prewar self. I’m beginning to think that the faith healer really cured him, or maybe the doctors made a mistake. It could happen. Either way, he looks pretty healthy.

“I can’t believe Mother’s actually sick,” I say, when Dad comes back down, cradling the baby. I want to say,
She’s just being lazy
, but I bite my tongue.

“Having too much to cope with can make you sick,” he says. “Besides the baby, Jamie is a constant worry for her.”

“You know what? Jamie’s going to be fine.” I’m on the point of telling him about the faith healer, but the baby starts to wail again. Dad puts him up over his shoulder and walks up and down while the baby shrieks in his ear. And then the little darling burps up a big gob of milky vomit down Dad’s back.

The next day, again just after lunch, Mrs. Hall drops by with a gift for the baby, a sweater and bonnet. Granny bought a few smocked nighties for him at the church bazaar, and various friends and neighbors have brought over other little items. The kid’s building quite a wardrobe. Mrs. Hall says, “Is there anything I can do to help out?”

“Not a thing,” Granny says. She gives her a bright smile as she clears away the lunch dishes. Typical of our family.
We don’t ask for help; we don’t like to impose on people; we like to appear self-sufficient.

“Well, I haven’t seen Dora outside with the baby, yet. I was wondering, is she all right?”

“She’s getting her strength back. It takes time,” Granny says.

“And the baby?”

“Beautiful, but a little colicky.”

Upstairs, the baby screeches his lungs out. I go up to the poor little red-faced creature, beating the air with his tightly clenched fists, his legs drawn up to his belly as he fills the air with outrage and his diaper with something else. He stops howling when I pick him up to change him. By the time I take him downstairs, Mrs. Hall has gone.

“Hand him over,” Granny says. She’s warmed a bottle for him.

Upstairs, I clean my teeth and try to get a brush through my hair. I put ointment on the scaly insides of my arms. Soon I hear Granny take the baby into Mother’s room.

Before leaving for school, I go in to see Mother. She’s lying on her side, with the baby asleep on the bed beside her. She looks bored and a little angry, and, for a brief moment, it goes through my mind that she doesn’t appear to like the baby very much.

“Want me to put him in his bassinet?” I ask. Because, what if she forgets about him and rolls on top of him? The small bassinet continues to sit on the cedar chest, at the
end of the bed, in the hope that, if the baby spends part of his day near her, Mother will pick him up from time to time and comfort him. No one knows if this ever occurs.

She looks at him, biting her lip. “He’s so fragile, isn’t he? I hope nothing happens to him.”

“He’ll be all right,” I say. He stays asleep while I pick him up and carefully place him in his little nest.

Next, I pop into Jamie’s room. He’s dressed and sitting at his desk, sealing an envelope. “I was just leaving,” he says.

“Where are you going?”

“Post office.”

The letter, I notice, is addressed to Ellie Cooper. “How come you’re writing to Ellie?”

“Just for something to do, Miss Nosy.”

I examine his face. “Are you in love with Ellie, now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Instead of going downstairs, though, he lies on top of his bed, heaving a big sigh. “I’ll just have a little rest first.”

“I’ll mail it on my way to school, if you like.” Of course, he’ll say no, but he surprises me.

“It’s got a stamp, so you can just stick it in the box at the corner. Thanks,” he says, almost as an afterthought.

Granny comes into his room. “Hustle, now,” she says to me. “You don’t want to be late.” She glances at Jamie. “Are you all right?”

“Never better.”

“I don’t like your color.”

“What an insulting thing to say.”

“Why don’t you go in and talk to your mother? Have a peek at the baby. He looks just like you.”

“That’s not what Rachel said.”

“What did I say?”

“You said he looks like a Martian.”

“Go in and pick him up,” Granny says. “It would do you the world of good.”

“If I did, I’d drop him for sure. I can’t be trusted.”

“Oh, Jamie!” she says, “You’re a trial to my patience.”

It’s Friday. I still haven’t said anything to my parents about Henley Falls. Tomorrow is the day I’m to drive there with Mr. Tompkins. Walking home, I remember how I used to look forward to the weekend. Not anymore. All I can see ahead is work and more work, and my only company, my sad little excuse for a family. I need the trip to Henley Falls.

I hurl myself into the house a little after four-thirty, banging the door behind me without a thought for the sleeping baby. I dump my schoolbooks on the back stairs and storm into the kitchen, confronted by the usual scene: brimming laundry basket, bottles boiling on the stove, stacks of folded diapers and nighties, and Granny looking about a hundred years old.

I sit at the table across from her. “I’m never going to have a baby,” I say. “I’m never even getting married!”

“You’ll change your tune when you get to a certain age.”

“Not if having babies turns you into a hopeless vegetable. I’m serious. This is slave labor we’re doing here. Why can’t that woman get off her bed and down here to help out?”

“Now, now, she would if she could. You don’t understand what she’s going through.”

“What
she’s
going through! What about me? What about you? Does anyone care what
we’re
going through? I have no friends. Even if Ruthie wasn’t completely involved in the play, she still wouldn’t have time for me. She says I’m no fun. I never get to do anything useful with the play because I always have to leave to look after the little monster.” I’m scratching like a madwoman. “It’s hopeless, just hopeless.”

Rose rubs up against my ankles, purring. I don’t care; I feel like kicking her. Of course, I don’t. I sit, picking at a chip of paint on the corner of the table, until Granny says, “Stop taking out your frustration on the furniture. And stop scratching. I’m going to trim those nails of yours right back to the quick if this keeps up.”

Now is not the best time to ask permission to go to Henley Falls. But, I have to go; it’s as simple as that. My one chance to find out where I stand with Tommy! I’ll have him all to myself for a whole morning. There’s only one way to do it. Lie. My lipstick is lurking in the corner of a kitchen cupboard. If I go, I will definitely wear it.

Granny says, “Just think how your little brother will appreciate you someday.”

“Who? That little eating-puking-peeing-pooping-crying machine? The kid doesn’t have a clue. He’s not even cute. He looks like something that accidently fell off the moon. He doesn’t even have a name.”