Little Red Lies (28 page)

I hold my sleeping brother in the crook of my arm, watching through the window as Mother and Granny drive off in the truck. I can’t help puzzling over the change in Mother. She makes me think of an abandoned sailboat, becalmed for weeks. Now, with the wind at her back, she’s able to sail bravely forward. But, to where? That’s the question we all face. Maybe she’ll be a lifeboat coming to our rescue, because that’s what we need right now—me, my brother, brothers I mean, my dad—something, anyway, to keep us all from floundering, drowning.

Tubes, bottles, the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and Jamie only half-awake. That’s what greets Granny and me when we visit Jamie the next day, Sunday. Afterwards, on the way home, Granny says, “I meant to ask you before, but so much has happened that it slipped my mind. Who was in that truck that pulled up in front of the house, early yesterday morning? I happened to look out the window and thought I saw you talking to someone.”

“Oh, that,” I begin. I feel little stabs of panic under my skin. I can make something up. Or—bizarre thought—I can confess everything and face the consequences. I am suddenly exhausted. I think of that stupid little tube of aptly named lipstick and all the troubles I’ve been trying to avoid with my colorful lies. I have a momentary picture of myself taking an ice pick from up my sleeve, skewering that red stick, and pitching the whole thing off the edge of the world. Granny’s looking at me, instead of the road, and narrowly misses sideswiping a parked car.

“It’s a long story, Granny. Maybe you should park the truck first.” And so, once we get home and into the house, it all comes out. Mother has just made a pot of tea and put out a plate of Granny’s homemade cookies. We all sit down at the kitchen table. The baby is asleep upstairs. “Um,” I begin as soon as we sit down. “I have a confession.”

“Eat first, sing later,” Granny says. My parents look at us curiously.

“How’s Jamie doing, now?” Dad asks.

“Still a bit dopey, but he’s doing fine.”

Granny prods me to finish my cookie, but I’m not hungry.

I push my chair back from the table, in case I have to make a quick getaway, and sit with my arms folded in front of me, like armor. I have to clear my throat once or twice, but I tell them everything in a level voice, at first, including the near kiss in the auditorium. Finally, tearfully, haltingly, I admit that I have been so much in love with Mr. Tompkins that I wanted to run away with him, would have, in fact, if it had come to that. Every sordid detail comes out, before I weep into my hands. I’m not crying about Mr. Tompkins, though. My grief is for the end of love. Every sweet, remembered morsel of how I once felt has gone sour, putrefied, and slithered right down the drain.

Mother puts her arms around me, rocking slightly. Dad hands me his handkerchief. A minute or so later, we calm down.

“The man should be horsewhipped,” Granny says. “He’s been setting you up.”

“At least you had the brains not to go with him yesterday,” Mother says.

“I think this would be of some interest to, not only the principal, but the school board,” Dad says. “Do you know of any other girls who might be … involved with him?”

“I wasn’t involved; I was in love.” I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

“I think you know what I mean.”

I remember the look of near panic I sometimes saw on Hazel’s face, when she looked up to see Mr. Tompkins’ eyes on her, in English class. I wonder if the reason she’s gone away to live with her grandmother has something to do with Mr. Tompkins’ unwanted attention. And then, there’s Ruthie. She’s been a Tommy fan, right from the start. I remember Mr. Tompkins suggesting that Ruthie would have gone with him to Henley Falls. How did he know that?

I have to face a moment of truth. What would be the honorable thing to do? Should I involve Ruthie and Hazel or allow them their privacy? “There might be others,” I say, “but they might not want the gossip.”

Granny says, “If you saw a hungry wolf slinking into town, would you warn your neighbors?”

“Well, sure … but that’s different.”

“A predator is a predator.”

Tears are running down my face again. “There’s a possibility that Hazel Carrington is involved in some way. And maybe …” I’m losing my voice, so I whisper, “Maybe Ruthie. I don’t know for sure. I’d have to ask her.”

Mother hugs me again.

Dad says, “There-there.”

“But, if I
am
the only one,” I say, “Ruthie will be mad as hops if she thinks I’m trying to mix her up in this.” I put my hands over my face and howl again. And then the
baby wakes up and howls, too. Oddly, this has a calming effect on
me
.

By the time we all get a grip on our emotions, things move pretty quickly. I phone Ruthie and tell her everything, all the stuff that happened at school, all the stuff after school, my near elopement, even though that part, at least, was only my wishful thinking.

After she squeals
Good Lord
and
You’re kidding
a few times, Ruthie confesses that Mr. Tompkins has been flirting with her, too. “Not only that,” she says, “he actually sneaked into the girls’ dressing room, while I was alone, trying on a costume. I was wearing only my slip, and he just stood there, staring at me. I thought I would die. He told me I had the figure of a goddess.”

“A goddess?” Now it’s my turn for
Good Lord
and
You’re kidding
. “What a horrid man!” I screech. I’m also thinking,
a goddess? Is he blind?

“And listen to this,” Ruthie says, “my sister, Joan, who always hears the gossip, said that Hazel Carrington left town because Tompkins kept trying to put his arms around her while he was counseling her. He said she needed to be caressed to get over the trauma of having an alcoholic mother. Caressed! So what do you think of that?”

“Alcoholic mother?”

“Yes, very sad. She’s away somewhere getting treatment.”

“Oh.” My madwoman in the attic with the lethal ice pick just got tossed out the window for a second time.

“Listen,” I say, “Tommy is a creep, the worst kind of creep there is. Tell your parents about him spying on you. Tell them to phone my parents.”

In her usual blunt way, Ruthie asks, “So are you still in love with him?”

“No, I hate him. Actually I hate myself because I loved the attention so much.”

“I know what you mean. I was completely flattered that he liked me.”

“Now, I could almost throw up. I must be such a despicable person,” I say. “I loved being with him. I really did. It was like being in a romantic movie that you never want to end. But, now, now that it has ended, all I have is me, looking foolish, hating myself.”

“You’ll get over it. I’m already over it, sort of.”

“I wish I could simply shed my skin and get rid of that part of me that needed him to touch me. I wish I could just peel it off and throw it on the floor.”

“I wonder if Hazel is over it.”

“Of course then I’d have to get out the vacuum cleaner and Hoover it up before my mother saw it. And it would probably jam up the works, and then I’d be in trouble for breaking the Hoover.”

“Rachel?”

“What?”

“You have an insane imagination.”

This is what it’s like to live in a small place like Middleborough. Time has a will of its own. Events can occur, sometimes, with the speed of lightning. I hear my father making phone calls and hear him say, a little later, that he’s going to a meeting at the school.

On Monday morning, Mr. Tompkins is not at school. The halls and classrooms are abuzz with rumors and half-truths and complete untruths. Ruthie and I make a pact that we won’t add a thing. We practice shrugging our shoulders.

In English class, there’s a substitute teacher who looks way older than Tommy. She’s a short, lively, butterball of a woman, with a voice like a sergeant major and red hair that won’t stay pinned up in a bun. Her name is Mrs. Borke. Life at school descends into the mundane.

I drag myself to drama that afternoon to witness the rehearsal of the hopeless play. Mrs. Borke is, of course, the new director. She watches the actors run lifelessly through their roles, hands on her hips, hair straggling around her ears. When it’s over, no one says a word. It seems that Mr. Tompkins has stolen the play’s very life and taken it away with him, wherever he is.

“Well, now,” says Mrs. Borke, at the end. “Wasn’t that a pathetic little offering!” She marches up and down the stage. “This play is supposed to be a comedy,” she roars. “I didn’t feel like cracking a smile, not even once.” She peers around at cast and crew through her round-rimmed spectacles. “It’s supposed to be a thigh-slapper! You have
to play to the audience. Tickle them. Make ’em laugh till they cry.”

She turns to Ruthie’s first speech in her copy of the script. She throws out lines in a hearty, comical voice, prances across the stage, throws herself into a chair, crosses her legs, and gives the male lead a broad come-hither look. I don’t know what everyone else thinks, but I’m thinking,
She’s not really a teacher! She’s a human being
. It isn’t long before she has us all laughing. A little more work, a little more laughter, and the play is reborn.

Even better, she says to me, “It’s time you started earning your keep as assistant director. I need you to be solely in charge for the first thirty minutes three days a week. I’m doing catch-up lessons with some of the fifth form students.”

“Okay,” I say. My arms aren’t even itchy. I walk home, grinning all the way.

Soon Jamie’s tubes and bottles disappear, but his recovery is slow, at least it seems slow to me. The days go by like weeks of darkness. And, then, the sun comes out. Granny and I are sitting with him in his hospital room. He wakes up, rubs his eyes, and says, “What happened to my watch?”

Both Granny and I spring to attention. “Your watch?” I say. “You were so sleepy, you didn’t really need a watch.”

“The nurses put it with your clothes,” Granny says.

“Of course I need it. What were they thinking? That I was finished with time?”

I rummage through his narrow closet and find it on the high shelf. After it’s set and wound, I buckle it on his wrist. He winces when I move his arm. “I feel as if I have toothaches in all my bones,” he says. Granny says she’ll find the nurse.

The next day, I go with Mother to visit him. He’s cranked up to an almost sitting position. His eyes widen when he sees her. “You’re better!” he says.

“Almost. I’ll be tip-top as soon as we get you home again.” Thinner now, she bends over and kisses him without any trouble. She smiles at him, like the mother we’ve always known.

“What happened? How did you get better so fast? Whatever it is, how about getting some for me? I’m sick of being sick.”

A few days later, when I come home from school, Mother and Granny are in the kitchen folding diapers. “Go up and look in Jamie’s room,” Mother says.

I don’t even bother to put my books down. Looking a little pale, a little thin, but there in the flesh is my big brother. “Apparently, I’m a mystery to the medical world,” he says. “I’m not strictly adhering to the textbook’s description of my illness. In spite of my diagnosis, I’m thriving. I’m supposed to stay in bed for a day or two, but soon I’ll be doing push-ups and running around the block six or eight times before breakfast.”

I deposit my books on his desk. “Maybe you should start a little slower. How about stargazing? How about fishing?”

“Good idea. Good way to get back to normal. Where’s my fishing rod, by the way? Is it here or at the farm? I wouldn’t want old Armstrong to get hold of it.”

“I’ll find it.”

I want to raise the issue of the faith healer, but I’m afraid to. Even though he’s a fake, Jamie must still believe in him. That’s why he keeps bouncing back. Maybe the important word is
faith
, Jamie’s faith in his own ability to heal.

We both hear the doorbell. A minute later, Ellie Cooper is standing in the doorway saying, “Knock, knock, knock. May I come in?”

Jamie sits up higher on his pillows and says, “Please do.” Suddenly, he has color in his cheeks. Ellie Cooper looks less like Coop’s shy sister, now, and more like a pretty young woman who is finding her way in the world. She says hi to me, then directs all her attention to Jamie.