Little Red Lies (10 page)

At school on Monday, I catch up to Ruthie in the corridor before our first class. “I’m afraid Jamie’s going to pop the question to Mary any day now,” I blurt.

“What do you mean ‘afraid’? I think that’s exciting.”

“She’ll take him away from us.”

“Doubt it. She’d never leave Middleborough. I wish my sisters would get married and move a hundred miles away. Then they wouldn’t be able to boss me around.”

“But, she’ll take him away from
me
,” I say.

Ruthie looks at me as if I have snakes in my hair.

“Do you have any spare cash?” Jamie asks me a week later, before I set off for school. My impulse is to say no. I have a sock stuffed with small change and small bills in my underwear drawer. I’m saving up for a typewriter.

“I might have a little. But you have to pay me back. What do you need it for?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“It is if I’m the banker.”

He scowls. “I’m taking Mary out to lunch at Wong’s
Grill, if you must know. I want to make sure I have enough and some left over for a tip. You’ll get it back, don’t worry.”

“Hmm. Wong’s Grill, eh? I suppose you’re going to pop the question.”

“What?” He’s blushing.

“You’re buttering her up so she’ll agree to marry you.”

“Look, if you don’t want to lend it to me, just say so. I can easily go to the bank, but I was there just yesterday.”

“So where did your money go?”

“Shoes. Clothes. Didn’t know they were so expensive after three years away and in uniform.”

Against my better judgement, I produce my sock and invite him to take what he needs. It isn’t Mary I’m against, necessarily. Mary’s all right. It’s the idea of losing my brother that bothers me. Once he gets married, he’ll never again take me along to Granny’s just for the ride, never fish with me, never confide in me and me alone.

Wong’s Grill
, I muse as I pack up my homework to take to school. Ruthie’s sister Joan usually takes her lunch break there with her work pals. A plot is beginning to form.

Nearly all the booths are taken, and the noise level is high, when Ruthie and I slip into Wong’s Grill on our lunch break from school. His back to the door, Jamie doesn’t notice us sneak in. I keep my hand half over my face. I should have a trench coat, but the turned-up collar of my blouse is all the disguise I can manage.

“There they are!” Ruthie says, pointing to a booth where Joan and her friends from the Bell, where she works, are forking down French fries.

I frown and put a quick finger to my lips, but Ruthie ignores me. “We’re joining you,” she announces loudly as she squeezes in beside her sister, pulling me after her. The older girls protest but shift to make room.

Jamie and Mary sit opposite each other at one of the tables in the center of the room. I notice Mary glance, with what looks like embarrassment, at
her
friends from Woolworths, in a booth on the other side of the room, the ones she usually has lunch with. Maybe she wishes she were with them, instead of Jamie. Or, maybe she has an inkling about what Jamie’s going to ask her.

Mr. Wong brings their orders—hamburgers, fries, and Cokes as well as separate bills. I watch Jamie snatch up Mary’s bill with his own. He probably wants to make sure she knows it’s his treat. She doesn’t seem to notice.

“Are you skipping school?” Joan asks us.

“No, we’re going back. It’s lunch hour,” Ruthie says. “Rachel wants to ask you something.”

“I do?”

Ruthie encourages me with a tight smile.

“Oh, yes, I want to ask you something.”

Joan leans towards me, puzzled. “This better be good, kiddo.”

I haven’t had time to think this through. “Um, Joan,
I was wondering if you have, um …” I pause to glance around the restaurant. “Oh,” I say, “my brother’s here. What a surprise!”

He isn’t taking his eyes off Mary as he nibbles a long French fry on the end of his fork. Mary tucks into her hamburger as if she’s been fasting for days. I keep ducking in behind Ruthie so Mary won’t see me. Jamie still, more or less, has his back to us.

“Oh, yes.” I turn back to Joan. “I was wondering if you have, um, um, if I could borrow …”

Jamie seems to be asking Mary a difficult question. She stares at him, her eyes round and startled as if he’s confessed to strangling cats.

Joan says, “I’m all ears. What do you want to borrow?”

Mary turns bright red, but she keeps on chewing.

Still looking at her, waiting for her response, Jamie finishes off the fry and slowly, deliberately, forks another. I wish I could lip-read.

“What?” Joan prompts, poking my arm. “Spit it out.”

I pull my eyes back into my head. “Books,” I say. “Do you have any good books I can borrow?”

Joan stares at me suspiciously, as if this is a trick question.

I take another peek at Jamie, who looks brokenhearted. His shoulders droop. He’s staring hard at his plate.

Mary drinks her Coke and chokes. When she recovers, she looks at her watch. “Oh, dear!” I
see
more than
hear
her say. She jumps up, making some sort of excuse to Jamie.
She gives a quick wave to her friends across the restaurant, and the bell over the door jingles as she leaves.

Jamie keeps his eyes on his plate, still heaped with food.

Mary’s friends, mouths agape, crane their necks to glimpse Jamie, who’s staring hard at his hamburger. It looks to me like he’s willing it to disappear. He even cuts it in half with his knife and fork. He swallows some Coke. He picks up a fry with his fingers, eats it, and wipes his hands on his thighs.

I bend in across the table to Joan. “Books?” Joan says turning up her nose. “I have a lot of movie magazines you can borrow.”

I have to look again at Jamie. He takes a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, wraps half his untouched hamburger in it, and jams it into his pocket.

I practically lie across the table to avoid notice because now he’s going to the cash register, which is close enough to us that I can overhear him talking to Mr. Wong.

Mr. Wong looks back at what’s left on his plate, half a burger and most of his fries. He says, “You no like my food?”

“Oh, yes. I do. For sure. But, you know (he looks at his watch to make the point), my fianc … my friend had to get back to work. She forgot she’d promised to cover for someone else. But it was very good. Delicious.”

Mr. Wong is about a hundred years old. Jamie wouldn’t want to upset him.

“You have nice snack in pocket for later. Okay. Bye-bye.”

Jamie says, “Bye-bye,” and leaves, his hand covering his bulging pocket.

Joan and her friends titter behind their hands. When they catch sight of me, they look a little embarrassed. I wish I’d never come.

“Movie magazines! Oh, sure, I’d love them.” I hate movie magazines. Sort of.

As soon as Jamie’s safely out of sight, Ruthie and I run outside and back to school. We’re ten minutes late and both get detentions.

Before serving them, we go to the auditorium to explain that we won’t be at rehearsal. Just as we open the heavy door, we meet Mr. Tompkins coming out.

“I was just going to send someone to look for you,” he says.

“We have detentions,” Ruthie says.

“Whatever for?” Mr. Tompkins has a way of looking at girls as if they’re breaking his heart.

“We were late after lunch,” I say.

“Ooh, no! You girls are so-o-o bad!” He puts his hands on both our shoulders and gives us a little shake. I feel his hand slide up my neck under my thick hair to tweak my ear.

Releasing us, he shakes a finger and says, “Don’t miss tomorrow’s practice. Final fitting for costumes. First performance this Friday!”

Back he goes into the auditorium, leaving us both breathless. The warmth of his hand on my neck, the pinch of his fingers on my earlobe, linger, making me dizzy with excitement.

Ruthie’s mouth hangs open. “Confess,” she says. “You are secret lovers.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I whisper hoarsely. I put my hand on my neck where his had been and relive the sensation.

All through our detention, Ruthie teases. “You’re in love. Confess.”

“He’s a teacher, for Pete’s sake.”

“He’s in love with you.”

“He just likes to tease.” My heart is thumping loud enough to be heard.

“Every girl in this school will be so jealous.”

I put my fingers in my ears to block out Ruthie’s taunts. But it has no effect on my imagination. I see myself running towards something huge, like a volcano, something dangerous.

I decide not to talk about my detention at home. It would just raise embarrassing questions. As I walk in, I hear a commotion upstairs. Mother’s voice is one notch below hysteria, and Jamie’s is gruff, protesting.

Upstairs, I park myself in his open doorway. Jamie’s in bed, pajamas and all, with a cold compress on his forehead and a glass of water and pills on his bedside table. Mother bustles about, clears his chair of clothes, and pushes it nearer to the bed.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Jamie fainted on his way home, after having lunch in a restaurant. Food poisoning, again, no doubt. The doctor should be here any minute.”

“People from all over town came to watch me fall down on Main Street,” Jamie mutters. “They figured I was drunk.”

“You’re feverish,” Mother says.

“Maybe I have that kind of flu everybody died from after the last war.”

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

The doorbell rings, and Mother rushes down to let the doctor in. Jamie looks scared, like a kid afraid of a needle.

Doctor Melvin hunches through Jamie’s doorway as if he’s had to stoop all his life to avoid knocking his head on low ceilings and doorjambs. But he’s only a little taller than I am. His stoop makes him look about ninety. I know he isn’t. Dad once said he’s in his sixties, but he’s practiced looking mature and responsible for so long that it’s prematurely aged him.

“Move out of the way, Rachel,” Mother says.

The doctor has Jamie unbutton his pajama top before he pushes and prods his belly. At one point, Jamie winces with pain. In his exploration, the doctor comes back again and again to that upper left side of his abdomen, pressing, but not as hard. “Hurts, does it?” he says.

“It’s his appendix, isn’t it?” Mother says. “I just knew it. That, or food poisoning.”

“No, it’s not his appendix. If you have something to do downstairs, I suggest you and Rachel go down and keep busy, Mrs. McLaren.” Usually he calls her Dora. “We’ll be all right here. Jamie’s a big boy, now.”

Jamie tightens his lips. “I fought in the bloody war,” he mutters. “I’m not a big boy; I’m a grown man. When is anyone going to recognize this fact?”

The doctor harrumphs and says, “Quite right, quite right!”

I follow Mother downstairs while she sighs and mutters. “I try to be a good mother, heaven knows.” At the bottom, she turns back and shakes a finger at me. “Just wait till you’re a mother, then you’ll know the heartache.”

“I don’t plan on being a mother.” I scratch my arms as if I would erase them.

“Stop scratching,” she says. “You’ll make your eczema worse.”

“It’s already worse.”

In the kitchen, she says, “I knew there was something wrong with him almost from the day we met him at the train station. But, I held my tongue, and now, of course, the blame falls on my shoulders.”

“No one is
blaming
you.”

She rinses out the dishcloth and begins scrubbing the stove top, then the table. Both were already in immaculate condition. “I noticed how thin he was, but it was your grandmother who drew everyone’s attention to it, as if she were the only mother at the table.”

“Don’t worry about it. He’ll be okay.”

“He’s been a worry from the day he was born. Colicky until he was six months, whooping cough when he was three.” She’s wiping down the front of the fridge, now. “Doctor Melvin said at the time that it wasn’t whooping cough, it was croup. But, as a mother, I did know a thing or two back then. It was whooping cough.”

This is old news from the days when Doctor Melvin presumably didn’t look a day over eighty-nine. I get out soda crackers and peanut butter for a snack. I have a feeling dinner will be a long time coming.

“Does Dad know Jamie fainted?”

“I phoned him. He said that the drugstore was extremely busy for some reason. I said, ‘You have two assistants. They don’t need the druggist there when there’s an emergency at home.’ Now, if it were me, I’d drop everything and race home to find out what the problem is. I don’t think men have the same capacity for caring that women do when it comes to their children.”

She lifts the hair off the back of her perspiring neck and looks around for something else that needs to be done. Filling the kettle with water, she places it on the back burner and says, “I really don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“For tea, maybe?”

“No, something else. It’s what my mother used to do in times of stress—fill time with a known habit. I remember when news came that my older brother was missing in action during the last war, my mother boiled water and cleaned every available surface, plunging her hands into the pail until they were as red as cooked lobsters. I was about your age.”

“Maybe you should go for a run around the block.”

“Why run? I’m not in a hurry. I’m upset. In my day people worked off their emotions; they didn’t try to run from them.” She’s now on her knees, scrubbing the table legs.

I head for the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“To my room.”

“Well, don’t bother the doctor.”

“I’m not going to!”

I leave my bedroom door open but, at first, can hear only muffled sounds from Jamie’s room. As I listen hard, I hear Jamie say, “That’s a lot of blood you’re siphoning off. I’ll be running on empty soon.”

“You might be a wee bit sicker than we thought.”

I move closer to my doorway.

“Will I need an operation?”

“No, I don’t think so. I want you to get as much bed rest as you can. I’ll tell your mother.”

I hear Dad come in so I go downstairs. When the doctor comes down, the two men shake hands. “Something about his blood cells, is it?” Dad asks, but Doctor Melvin won’t commit himself, even to Howard McLaren, pharmacist, father of the patient.