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Authors: Rebecca Stowe

Tags: #Fiction, #Family Life, #Literary, #Coming of Age

Not the End of the World (9 page)

BOOK: Not the End of the World
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Let him, I thought, let him have a fit. He acted like it would be the end of the world if dinner wasn’t steaming in his face at precisely six o’clock, as if the whole universe would be set off balance if we weren’t in our places, saying grace, as if God would leave without us if we weren’t on time.

I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat, wondering what I’d do now that I was friendless. “Nice work, dumbo,” Margaret said and Cotton Mather wanted me to drown myself in the tub. “Now, now,” Sarah said, “it’s not as bad as all that.”

When Sarah wasn’t busy crying or whining or wringing her hands, she liked to be a Good-Do-Bee. She was always saying things like “Forgive and forget,” and “Turn the other cheek” and all that blessed-are-the-meek stuff.

“Count your blessings,” she said and I had four. The first was Goober, who was everything a friend should be. She listened to me without interrupting and never threatened or teased or turned on me, like real people do. Ginger used to have a dog, a silly hotdog named Fritz who she called Bean. “Bean as in human bean,” she said and it was true, dogs were more human than people, or at least they were all the things that everybody kept telling us we were supposed to be but never were themselves. Loyal. Trustworthy. Devoted. Loving. Protective. Playful. That goofball Fritz was the best thing in Ginger’s life—he’d get on his back and scoot across
the floor like a swimmer doing the backstroke. “Swim, Fritz!” we’d say and down he’d plop, with the corners of his muzzle turned up as if he were laughing too. Too bad Mrs. Moore had him gassed. He pooped in her bedroom once and that was his death sentence.

My second blessing was the Lake. I knew how lucky I was to live in a house right on the Lake, to have my very own beach and a place to run to. In the summer I was in the Lake more than I was out of it. I had a bright yellow raft with a clear plastic view-hole in the pillow, and I’d lie on it and paddle out, looking straight down to the rocks below and watching the fish swim by. Last summer a foreign freighter had brought some lampreys into the Lake, stuck on the bottom of the boat like barnacles. They attacked the fish and all summer long hundreds of dead fish washed up along the shore, making it reek like a sewer. Goober loved it—she couldn’t wait to get out of the house and run down to the beach and roll around in all those slimy silver bodies. I guess the eels must have frozen to death during the winter, or gone back to the ocean, where they belonged, because we didn’t have a problem any more. “Nature takes care of itself,” Mother said.

My third blessing was my family. I should have put them first on my list, and it would have hurt their feelings to be third, even though they didn’t
know
I had a list. They gave me a nice place to live and they were nice to all my friends and weren’t too embarrassing, for parents. They were the kind of parents you could go places with and while they might not be outstanding in any way, at least you didn’t have to worry that they’d end up dancing with a lampshade on their head or getting up to sing with the band or falling down the stairs dead drunk, like Cindy’s ex-dad used to do. We were all terrified of Mr. Tucker—he used to come home
and if Cindy wasn’t there, he’d come tearing out of the house screaming for her and drag her all the way home by her ponytail. It made me understand why Cindy was so mean, but understanding it didn’t mean I had to like it.

For my fourth blessing I counted all my bodily parts, which were all in place, except my tonsils and adenoids, and all in good working order. I was healthy and at least I didn’t have a wooden leg, like Wilma Bosniak. Wilma was in Donald’s class and had got polio and had to have her leg removed. The fake one wasn’t really wood, it was plastic, kind of skin-toned, and it was hooked onto her body with metal clasps and I thought it must have hurt like hell. Wilma lived in a stone house on Beach Street and I remembered playing with her when I was little, before she got polio. I remembered the wonderful playhouse she had in her basement: a miniature, kid-sized house with little chairs and tables and cupboards and everything. I wanted to go live there and Mother nearly had a fit when Mrs. Bosniak told her I’d asked if I could move in. I loved Wilma’s basement—it was so safe down there and whenever we’d have tornado warnings, I’d sit huddled with everyone in the downstairs closet, wishing I was safe over at Wilma’s, but of course I would never desert my family, let them get sucked up in the funnel while I stayed safe and sound in Wilma’s playhouse.

We didn’t have a basement. We just had a little utility room, which wasn’t even underground and would have been no use whatsoever in a tornado, much less an atomic blast. A few years ago, when the Prittles put in a bombshelter, Daddy had a contractor come over to build one for us, too, but we were too close to the beach and there was nothing under our house but sand. In a way, I was glad. Before we knew we couldn’t have one, I’d lie awake all night, wondering who I’d invite to come hide with us if we got attacked. It was horrible,
some people would have to get left out and I thought it would be our fault for not letting them in and I just hated the idea of it. Now that I was friendless, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but I was still glad we didn’t have a bombshelter. I think I’d rather have been blown to bits than spend ten years in a windowless room with my family.

When Wilma got polio, we weren’t allowed to play with her any more; she was quarantined away in her house and she was never the same after that. She kept herself apart, out of shame, I guessed, and fear of being ridiculed and rejected. She couldn’t bear to have anyone watch her walk, and I could hardly blame her. It wasn’t very pretty. Her fake leg had a kind of metal hinge at the knee, but either it didn’t work or Wilma couldn’t figure out how to use it, because she’d keep it straight and stiff and every time she took a step, she’d move her good leg forward and then swing the fake leg around, from the hip, like a sack of potatoes. When the bell rang to change classes, everyone would run through the halls and then when the second bell rang, you could hear Wilma slowly thudding down the hall like Frankenstein’s monster. I thought she should just forget the fake leg and get crutches. Then she could move faster and she could just jab anyone who dared to make fun of her.

So, when I thought about Wilma, hiding herself away because of her leg, or about the poor people in Riverside, living in their rickety houses with their grey scrubby lawns and their kids who were always falling through the ice or getting sucked into the swamp, or about Mrs. Moore and Cindy’s ex-dad, I thought I must be the luckiest girl in the world and it was a sin I wasn’t happy, grateful, cheerful, kind and normal.

“You are the most morbid child in the world,” Mother always said, but look who was talking. The woman who would shut herself up in her bedroom, crying for a week, because she couldn’t cook broccoli.

“Margaret Sweet Pittsfield!” Mother shouted up the stairs. “You get down here this instant! The table needs to be set!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I growled, hating the poor table and its important needs, as if it would crumble into dust and die of shame and loneliness if it weren’t set exactly right and exactly on time. “I’m
coming!”

R
UTHIE
was sitting in her place, waiting. Her patience was unbelievable—she’d spend hours out in the garage, just looking at those bird corpses, drawing them over and over again until she got them perfect. I was exactly the opposite. I’d try something once and if I didn’t get it right, it got tossed and I was running to something else. “Miss Perpetual Motion,” Mother called me, saying if I didn’t slow down I’d have a heart attack.

I grabbed the blue and white woven place mats from the cupboard. They were my favorite ones, the ones Mother brought back from Portugal when she flew over to meet Daddy, leaving us with that horrid Mrs. Jolly. She was one of those devout people who thought playing cards was sinful. “Mrs. Anything-But,” I called her and even Grandmother had to laugh.

“Remember Mrs. Jolly?” I asked Ruthie as I shoved a place mat in front of her She giggled as she moved aside, not the least bit offended by my pushing into her territory. Unbelievable!
If someone tried to barge into my territory, I’d refuse to budge, I’d make myself into a pillar, I’d push them right back out. But not Ruthie. She was the most docile and placid child in the world and I guessed it just wasn’t that important to her; she’d rather have me speak nicely to her than preserve her boundaries.

“You and Cindy got all silly,” she said, holding her chubby hand over her mouth and laughing. “Mrs. Jolly was going to call the police.”

“What?” Mother cried. “What’s all this about the police?”

“It’s nothing, Mother,” I said. “She’s just talking about the time Cindy and I drank that cider.”

“Oh,” Mother said, giggling herself. They’d arrived home from their trip and we had all run out to greet them, to help them with their luggage, jumping up and down with joy, while Mrs. Jolly stood in the doorway, grim as a hatchet, waiting to chop me to pieces. “Ruthie and Donald were angels,” she said without even a how-was-your-trip? “But Margaret was scandalous.”

“Scandalous.” That was a first. Sometimes I thought I was doing my siblings a favor just by being alive; they always seemed like angels, compared to me, and Donald especially got away with murder because no matter how bad he was or how much trouble he got into, it was never as bad as something I’d just done. Besides, he was a boy and boys were expected to have a certain amount of badness, otherwise they could turn out to be sissies.

“Well, I guess that incident will keep you away from the cider from now on,” Mother said, but cider was for babies. I already drank the hard stuff, sometimes; I had a jar of Mother’s Scotch hidden under the eaves and every once in a while I’d mix it with Coke and sit there all night, thinking about being the first woman governor of Michigan or the first
woman astronaut or the first person to swim the Lake. I liked getting dizzy and then having the world get kind of lopsided and hazy and it was the only time when all my parts seemed to be one. Or maybe they disappeared. I didn’t know, all I knew was that when I was hiding under the eaves, drinking that Scotch, I felt comfortable with myself and there were no voices screeching and clamoring and telling me how rotten I was. I felt peaceful and calm and I liked that, even if I had to pay for it the next day, when as soon as I’d wake up, Cotton Mather would start pounding his pulpit and telling me I was beyond salvation and I was going to turn into an alcoholic, even though I was only twelve.

It wasn’t exactly fun, not like that first time, with Cindy. We’d been up in my bedroom, hiding in the Black Hole and reading horror comic books and making gum-wrapper chains and drinking the cider I’d brought up from the garage. We didn’t realize it was hard, not at first, but it tasted different, all fizzy and tart, as if someone had put carbonated water in the jug. After a few glasses, when we started screeching and laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe, we figured it out, but by then we were having too much fun to stop. Suddenly, everything was hilarious and bright and sparkling and the world seemed so easy, so wonderful and all our little troubles seemed so absurdly insignificant. Who cared if I was crazy, who cared if Cindy’s ex-dad had sneaked in their house and stolen all the silverware?

We put on records and danced around; we ran into my parents’ room and pulled down Mother’s hat boxes and we even grabbed Ruthie and dragged her into my room and dressed her up like a witch, painting her face with Mother’s make-up so she looked like a ghoul from the comic books. She was in heaven—she didn’t understand why Cindy and I were so happy, but it didn’t matter to her, she just wanted to
be happy too, and she laughed and acted as silly as we did. We ordered pizzas to be sent to all the neighbors houses and then watched out the window, nearly suffocating with laughter, as the pizza boy stood there with his box while Mr. Ditwell shouted and pointed and slammed the door in his face. Everything was outrageously funny, even Mrs. Jolly lumbering up the stairs shouting, “What’s going on up there?”

She barged into my room and stood there like a hangman, scowling at our glee. She gasped when she saw the horror comic books lying around, and when she saw Ruthie painted up like a monster, she nearly keeled over “Torturers!” she shouted. “Devils!” We fell on the floor laughing and Ruthie tried to stand up for us, crying streaks of red and black, saying, “We’re
playing!
We’re having
fun!”

“You’ve been drinking!” Mrs. Jolly gasped when she saw the empty jug. “You’re
drunk!”

Cindy and I rolled on the floor, laughing so hard it hurt, shouting, “Stop! Stop! You’re killing me!” and Mrs. Jolly grabbed Cindy and yanked her up.
“You!”
she said menacingly. “Go home. And don’t ever come back here!” She pushed her out of my room and although Cindy was shaken, she managed to stand behind Mrs. Jolly and pretend to kick her in the butt. “Don’t! Don’t!” I tried to say; I knew I’d really get it if I kept laughing, but I couldn’t help it—there was Cindy, all red-faced and messy, standing behind Mrs. Jolly’s flat, skinny butt, making faces and pretending to sniff, rolling her eyes and holding her nose.

BOOK: Not the End of the World
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