Little Red Lies (18 page)

“He’s a terrible flirt,” Will says.

“He’s not interested in me. Why would he be? He’s married.”

“No, he’s not. A friend of mine asked him, and he said he isn’t.”

“There’s no law against talking to a single man, especially if he’s your teacher.”

“They say he was fired from his last job.”

“Who says?”

“That’s the scuttlebutt.”

“That’s stupid. I expect he was overseas, like all the other young men.”

“Apparently not. A guy in my class asked him. He was turned down because of flat feet.”

“Well, he wasn’t fired. If it were true, he’d hardly be hired here.”

“The school needed someone in a hurry. Remember? Mr. Mackiewitz left suddenly.”

“I think someone’s spreading nasty stories,” I say.

We walk in silence to the next corner, where we pause before going in different directions.

“Well, he’s sure got the girls eating out of his hand,” Will says.

I picture soft-eyed does, coming tamely from the forest toward his outstretched hand, and imagine I hear the crack of a rifle.

“He’s just giving me some advice,” I say, a trifle haughtily. I don’t want to, and don’t need to, go into details, and so I leave it there.

“Well, take care,” he says and lopes off down the street.

Scuttlebutt’s a good word. Imagine old Will Cooper using a word like scuttlebutt. The world is full of surprises.

I walk on, and in spite of everything reasonable, I find myself back inside a daydream, Tommy’s hand singeing my shoulder, his gaze burning my face. My worries are tucked away in some dark cold cave at the back of my mind.

Golden autumn gives way to winter almost overnight, it seems. Leaves sweep and swirl ahead of me, each day, as I trudge to school. We have a few light snowfalls, but nothing permanent, yet. I wear earmuffs to school, spurning a hat, and continue to sport bobby socks and saddle shoes, ignoring my mother’s warnings that my legs and feet will get frostbitten and my toes fall off. I wait, as patiently as possible, for Mr. Tompkins to come up with the promised advice, but he always seems busy, always rushes off to do something else.

One day after English class, he says, “The friend I want to talk to about your brother is away until after Christmas. I hope you can wait that long for me to advise you.”

“I guess so,” I say. I’m disappointed, but I fake a smile.

“This person is an expert, so it’s going to be worth the wait, I’m sure.”

“Okay.” I try not to look glum, but I think I fail. He puts his hands on either side of my face and stretches my lips into a smile. And then, I do smile.

Every week or so, I write to Jamie in Toronto, and amazingly, he writes back. “Do me a favor,” he writes, “and ask Mary to send me a letter.” He’s written two letters to her, he tells me, and needs to hear back.

So, I go into Woolworths. “Oh, for sure,” Mary says, “I keep meaning to write. It’s just that I’m really busy these days.” She turns pink and ducks her head under the counter, looking for a tin of talcum powder that she knocked to the floor. “Maybe you should give me his address again. I think I lost it.” I write it on a scrap of paper torn from my notebook.

I try to wait patiently for Mr. Tompkins to advise me, but it’s really hard. What makes it even harder is listening to Ruthie tease me about him, calling me a home-wrecker. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her that Will Cooper said he isn’t married.

There’s something about Hazel that bothers me, too. In English class, with our heads bent over a poem we’re dissecting, I sometimes look up, and with a shock, notice Mr. Tompkins’ gaze falling directly on Hazel and staying there. It makes me sad and, at the same time, nervous,
although I don’t know why. Sometimes I see Hazel glance up at him with an expression I have trouble translating. Is it adoration, or is it something like panic?

In my letters to Jamie, I try to describe what’s happening at home:

Jamie writes back:

Three days before Christmas, we’re slouching on the living room sofa, supposedly admiring the tree.

“Too short,” I say. “A tree for gnomes.”

“Not enough decorations,” Jamie says. “Looks like it’s been through the Depression.”

It doesn’t take Jamie long to see what I meant in my letter about our parents. “What’s the matter with them?” he whispers. “They seem so vague, as if they’re only half here.”

“This is only a theory,” I say, “but I’m afraid some alien being has taken our parents and exchanged them for two Martians who look just like them.”

“Although not quite,” Jamie says. “The mother they gave us is fatter.”

“And moodier,” I say. “If she’s not humming to herself and grinning, she has tears running down her cheeks, as if the world has come to an end.”

Next day, I convince Jamie to go Christmas shopping with me.

“How can I buy you a present if you’re standing beside me?” he says.

“I’ll turn my back.”

We put on our coats and hear Mother on the phone, saying she’s awfully sorry about something. “I hate to miss it, but I’ve nothing to wear.” She lowers her voice. “Nothing fits, now.”

“She bawls me out for saying that,” I whisper to Jamie.

“She’s just going through the middle-aged spread.”

“Tellin’ me. More like the middle-aged paunch.”

We kick snow ahead of us as we head downtown. Jamie consults his list. “Granny wants a book, so that’s easy. For Dad, I was thinking a scarf, but maybe a book. Something dealing with politics or the war. Maybe a book for Mother, too. Something on diets. Or would that be insulting?”

“Very. Don’t do it.”

“Maybe a book of poetry would be better.”

“She doesn’t read poetry.”

“She could start.”

“Are you getting something for Mary?”

“Of course.”

The first night he was home, Jamie invited Mary to come over and listen to his Glen Miller recordings. She was still there when I came home from Ruthie’s. Our parents were banished, I guessed, to their room. I plunked myself down on a chair, saying, “So what’s new?”

Mary couldn’t find much to talk about and, pretty soon, looked at her watch. She said, “I should go home because my mother will get mad if I stay out too late.”

Jamie kept glaring at me, but I was able to ignore him. “I’ll walk you home,” he said, finally, and they went to put on their coats. He said, “I have a question for you, Mary.” I was kind of lingering near the hall door and accidentally heard him. “When are you going to leave home and find yourself an apartment?”

“An apartment? Oh, well, I guess I won’t,” she said. “Not until I get married. There’s no point.”

“Oh.” And that’s when they went out, leaving me to wonder what would happen next.

“Maybe I’ll give Mary an engagement ring,” Jamie says as we head downtown.

“Waste of money,” I say.

“I don’t think so. I bet she wants proof that our friendship is going somewhere.”

We come to Phillip’s Jewelry Store, first, and look in the window at the gold and silver rings on display, their stones sparkling in a sudden burst of winter sunshine. We can’t see any of the prices. I twist my head nearly upside down and glimpse a figure of $375.

“Oh.” Jamie bites his lip. “A bit more than I’d bargained on.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m not turning over my savings to you.”

“Actually, maybe she’d prefer a book.” In the bookstore window is a copy of
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
by Fannie Farmer. “That cook book, for instance. If I give her that, she’ll realize that one of these days I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

“Not one of your better ideas.”

We go inside while he mulls over the choices. “Diamond ring? Cook book? Hang on,” he says, his eyes wide as if he’s just had an epiphany.

“What, now?”

“Why would Mary Foley want to marry me, if she thinks I’m dying?”

I frown. I have no answer.

“I know what I have to do. I have to go straight to Woolworths and tell her the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“About the faith healer. That I’ve been cured.”

He’s out the door, the bell jingling, before I can say, “Hey, wait!”

Outside, sliding on a patch of ice, I yell, “Hey, wait!” But he’s gone. I catch up to him just inside the department store, glaring at the cosmetics counter, near the back of the store. Mary’s there, of course, looking beautiful, hair shining, eyebrows arched just so. She smiles winningly at
a customer, someone familiar. That Armstrong guy! Roy Armstrong. We watch, from a distance, for a moment, as they carry on a hilarious conversation, both of them laughing like maniacs.

“What are they laughing about?” I whisper. “Nothing’s that funny!”

Jamie’s face looks like a blank page. He clutches the corner of a counter, as if it might try to get away.

“May I help you with something?” Mrs. Hulbert, the clerk, asks. She knows us because she’s in Mother’s church group. “I guess I’ll look at the scarves.” Jamie mumbles.

“Certainly.” She shows him five scarves in five different colors, and he says he’ll take them all. The Armstrong guy is still there chatting up a storm. When Mrs. Hulbert hands Jamie his change, she smiles at me and says, “And how is your mother keeping, dear?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” I say.

“I’m so happy for her.”

That’s nice, I think, but why?

We arrive home to the cinnamony smell of baking pies. And on the kitchen table, cookies are spread out on a piece of brown paper. Mother says, “Go ahead, try one. Two. You may each have two. They’ve just come out of the oven.”

We take two each and breathe contented sighs because we’re lucky enough to have a mother who bakes delicious cookies, and we know enough to appreciate it.

Christmas goes off as scheduled, with the usual good food and plenty of it. The presents we exchange are just what each of us wanted. Jamie and I went together on a gift for Mother, and when she opens it, she bursts into tears. That jars us both.

“It’s so beautiful,” she weeps. “Is it a garnet? That’s my birthstone. How did you know that?”

“Mother,” Jamie says, “calm down. It’s only a necklace, not the crown jewels.”

“Oh, my sweet, sweet, boy. Thank you so much, darling.”

“It’s from me, too,” I say.

“Oh, yes, of course, thank you both.”

Easy to see who’s the favorite.

The phone rings in the afternoon, when we’re lying around reading our new Christmas books. It’s Mary Foley, who says a little too eagerly, “I’m afraid I’ve come down with a bad cold, so I won’t be able to give Jamie his present.” She coughs to demonstrate.

“I’ll let him know.” A corny little movie starring Roy Armstrong, flirting with Mary while she bats her eyes at him, plays over and over in my mind, and it’s all I can do to remain civil. I’m thinking, I should just wrap up all those scarves Jamie bought in one big parcel and take them over to her.
Merry Christmas from Jamie
, I’d say.
These will keep your neck warm the rest of your short life
. Then I’d strangle her with them.

“Sorry about your cold,” I say, although I’m not. I go upstairs and tell Jamie what she said.

“Good,” he says.

“Good? Why good? Are you over her?”

He looks as if he’s surprised himself. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just realizing that life’s too short to pretend to be in love.”

Two days after Christmas, one of Mary’s brothers, Tim or Tom, drops by after lunch with a present for Jamie from Mary. I run upstairs to where he’s studying, to tell him. He closes his book with a bang and mutters something under his breath. Grabbing one of the scarves from the back of the shelf in his cupboard, the red one, he finds tissue paper, hurriedly wraps it up, and licks three Christmas seals to stick it all together.

“You don’t need to do this, you know,” I say.

“It’s a matter of pride.”

I follow him down to the front hall, where Tim or Tom is waiting, and watch him hand over the scarf for Mary.

“Hope Mary gets over her cold soon,” Jamie says.