Us and Uncle Fraud (11 page)

He followed me then. We stumbled toward home, and the rain continued to fall.

The doctor came to the house and examined Marcus and me as we sat shuddering, silent and stunned. He cleaned our cuts, bandaged Marcus's ankle, and
gave us both pills that made us sleep most of the day and night. In the morning I felt groggy and confused. Mother told me what had happened, but I shrank inside myself and wouldn't listen. I refused to look at the newspaper. On the front page there was a picture of men lifting my brother carefully to the bridge with ropes. I turned away from it, feeling sick, and stared dumbly at the wall.

"Louise," Mother said in a firm voice, holding my shoulders, "read what it says. BOY SURVIVES FLOOD MISHAP. Tom isn't dead, Louise."

I believed her, but it didn't seem to matter. Mother and Father had been at the hospital all night long. Tom was in a coma.

The tree, with Tom clinging to it, had been swept down to the bridge in just seconds and had caught there. He had screamed for help and been heard. But the water washed over him in surges, slamming him again and again into the concrete and steel supports. By the time help reached him, he was battered and unconscious, half-drowned, with both arms and his skull fractured. Even the doctors were not sure if he would live.

But Mother was sure. She said so with brisk authority: Tom would live. She made us all believe it.

Father's sisters, Florence and Jeanette, arrived by train and took up residence in our house, caring for Stephanie while Mother and Father spent days at the hospital beside Tom's bed. My aunts saw to it that Marcus and I got dressed and off to school
in the mornings after we were ready to go back. Marcus's badly sprained ankle healed ; our cuts and bruises healed ; we were the center of attention for a while at school. And, after a few days, the rain even stopped.

But Tom didn't heal. His broken bones, the X rays showed, were beginning to knit together inside the heavy plaster casts. But he didn't wake up. After a week, even Mother's vibrant optimism became shaky, and sometimes I saw her stop whatever she was doing and stand silently, a look of infinite sadness on her face.

Father, too, was changed. His usual attitude of gruff playfulness and good-natured rudeness evaporated. He was gentle toward Mother and tolerant of the intrusion of the two aunts, who were always in the way and creating complicated productions of the most simple household tasks.

"Relax," he said to Aunt Florence, who came to him, worried and flustered, one evening when Mother was at the hospital. Stephanie's only clean pajamas had a broken elastic in the waist. "Use a safety pin," Father told her calmly. Marcus and I overheard and looked at each other in astonishment. In the old days—before the flood, as we referred to that time to each other—he would have exploded; he would have bellowed, "For the Lord's sake, Florence, put the child to bed naked! Do you think the world requires a piece of elastic to revolve? And stop that incessant hand-wringing or you'll drive me completely around the bend!"

Another evening I went to the basement to borrow the ball of twine that I knew was on Father's workbench, and I found him there, all alone. Around him, strewn across the workbench and on the floor, were all the parts of Tom's bike. He was meticulously examining each piece, one by one; he was sanding and scraping bits of rust away and rubbing the pieces with oil. It was the kind of thing that Thomas himself would have done, but Father had always been too impatient for such intricate, time-consuming tasks. He hadn't heard me come down, and he didn't see me watching. For a long time I stood there in the shadow of the huge furnace, and watched as he held the smallest bolts almost lovingly in his large hands, smoothing and oiling them, fitting the pieces together so that the bicycle would be whole again.

Some nights after supper he sat quietly in his big chair, ignoring the evening paper; and if we went to him, Marcus or Stephie or I, he would take us into his lap and stroke our hair in silence.

After three weeks, Mother told Marcus and me that we could go to the hospital to see Tom. We were too young, and it was against the rules; but they would make an exception for us. We went with her in the afternoon, after school, and we were frightened. In the hospital room, Marcus and I stood beside each other and looked apprehensively at the bandaged stranger in the bed.

"Thomas," Mother said, leaning over him and
speaking in her normal, everyday voice, "it's a beautiful day, and I saw a bright red cardinal in the yard this morning.

"And today I've brought Marcus and Louise to see you," she added cheerfully.

She nudged us forward. "Say hello to him," she said.

"Hello, Tom," I whispered.

"Hi," Marcus said.

"Tell him what's going on in school," Mother suggested.

Talking to someone whose eyes were closed and who didn't respond made me uncomfortable and scared. But I took a deep breath and said, "Today we played softball at recess and Charlie Clancy got picked off second base when he tried to steal third. And, let's see, ah, Nancy Brinkerhoff has chicken pox, but Mother says we all had it when we were little, so we can go down to her house after school and play with her." I poked Marcus, so that he would take over.

"We had a spelling bee," Marcus said, "and I missed 'receive,' like I always do. What else? Oh yes, Kenny Stratton had to stay after school because he wrote a swear word inside his arithmetic book and the teacher saw it, and—"

He looked at Mother. "I can't think of anything else," he said apologetically.

At the end of our brief and miserable visit, Mother walked us to the elevator. She would stay until suppertime, and Marcus and I could go on
home. We both tried to think of something cheerful to say.

"I think his bandages are neat," Marcus said. "I always wished I could have a broken arm so that I could have a cast and people could sign their names on it."

"Yeah. Me, too," I said.

Suddenly Marcus's eyes filled with tears. "He looks
dead!
" he wailed.

Mother put her arm around him. She led both of us into a small waiting room nearby. "He's just asleep," she said. "That's what a coma is, you know. I explained that to you—it's a very, very deep sleep."

Marcus's outburst had freed my own tears, and now I cried, too. "Why do you keep talking to him? Why did you make us
talk
to him? That felt terrible!"

She sat us both down, and she sat beside us on the stiff, uncomfortable couch. "The doctors told Father and me," she explained, "that although they can't be sure, they think that sometimes a person in a coma can hear. Tom can't open his eyes yet, and he can't speak, of course, but maybe he can hear us. So I talk to him all day, and Father does, too, when he's here."

I thought about what an agonizing effort it had been for me to say a few sentences to Tom. "Don't you get tired?"

It was a foolish question because I could see how tired she was. It showed in her eyes.

"Yes," she said. "Of course I do. It's hard to think of things to say, all day long. But I keep talking because it may be the thing that wakes him up."

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. "I could try harder," I said. "I promise I will. Can I come back, if I promise to try harder?"

Marcus nodded in agreement. "I will, too," he said.

And so the schedule changed. Every day, after school, Marcus and I trudged to the hospital, so that Mother could go home and rest. Every day until suppertime, Marcus and I stood beside that bed and talked endlessly. We became accustomed to it, the bizarre act of talking to a motionless, sleeping figure in a bed. We told jokes, sang songs, made up stories, and recalled the plots of movies. Nurses came and went, adjusting Tom's covers, taking his pulse and his blood pressure; they smiled at us, and nodded their approval. And we talked on.

Days passed, and spring turned into summer. Still Tom didn't wake.

One day another postcard came from Claude, who in his rootless travels had not heard about Tom's tragedy. It was addressed to Marcus and me, and postmarked Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I hadn't thought about Claude in a long time, and now the postcard made me angry. "This is the land where fortunes are to be maid," it read, "and I am in on the ground floor of something. One of these days I will ride up in a Rolls Roice and take you two for SOME RIDE!!!"

I showed it to Marcus, who shrugged, and then I showed it to Mother. She laughed.

"There he goes again," she said. "Claude will still be chasing his dreams when he's ninety years old."

I crumpled the stiff postcard in my hands and threw it into the wastebasket disdainfully. "I hate him," I said. "He lied to Marcus and me."

She was still laughing. "Don't say that, Louise. He told you fairy tales, perhaps. But he never meant to lie. When people tell wild stories, they don't expect anyone to believe them."

"Oh no? How about what he told Marcus and me, that he'd hidden something for us—a gift just for us two?"

"He probably did. Probably somewhere in the house, eventually, you'll find some silly gift and realize that it came from Claude."

"I'm not talking about some silly gift. He told us what it
was.
And he said it came from Russia, that he'd smuggled it out. It was fancy Easter eggs, all decorated with real jewels, even diamonds. And we believed him. Remember that crazy clue he left, those words that don't mean anything? He made it all up!"

"My goodness, Louise, I forgot to tell you something. I remembered the instant you said Easter eggs. It's been here for
days
, and I completely forgot—I'm sorry." She went to the hall closet and reached up to the shelf.

"Here," she said, handing it to me. "I was in the library, and Mr. Mueller asked me to bring this home for you. He said he was sorry it took so long, but he had to order it from the state library."

I took the small book and looked at the picture on the cover. Then I leafed through and looked briefly at the other pictures. There they were: those fabulous, priceless eggs that Claude had described.
Some of the photographs were in color, and the brilliance of the jewels gleamed on the pages.

I tossed the book scornfully on the kitchen table. "Those are the eggs that he said he had hidden for us, the liar," I said.

Mother picked it up and turned the pages. "They're very beautiful," she said.

"And he lied, right?" I looked belligerently at her. "He couldn't have gotten two of those for Marcus and me, could he?"

She was reading some of the captions. After a moment she put the book back down. "No," she told me, "I'm sure he couldn't have. But, Louise—"

"What?" I asked sullenly.

"He
wanted
to. Can't you be grateful for that, that Uncle Claude wanted to give you something exquisite and valuable?"

"No. And I hate him, for making me believe it."

"He has flaws, Louise, like all the rest of us."

"Claude the Flawed," I said bitterly.

"Louise, listen to me," Mother said firmly. "You know Claude is different. You know he has flaws. He can't seem to hold a job, he has no money, and sometimes he drinks too much. But he never hurts anyone. He tries so hard, still, to create worlds for himself, worlds where he is rich and where he can give wonderful gifts. It's all in his imagination—but imagination itself is a gift, Louise. Can't you appreciate that, at least?"

I shook my head stubbornly. "Why don't you
hate him?" I asked. "You've known him his whole life, and he probably lied to you all the time. He probably made up all sorts of stuff, and you probably believed him lots of times when you were young."

She smiled. "Sometimes I did."

"So there. You ought to hate him."

"Louise, Louise," Mother said, "he's my
brother.
I've always loved him."

Marcus and I stood by Tom's bed late in the afternoon. We were exhausted with the effort of talking continuously, as we always were at the end of the day. There was a moment's pause as we both searched our minds for something new to say.

I remembered the newspaper, Tom's greatest love, his ambition for the future.

"Father says they miss you at the paper," I said, taking a deep breath to embark on another lengthy one-way speech. "They got so used to you always hanging around and helping out, that now they really miss you.

"On the morning after the flood, your picture was on the first page; did Mother or Father tell you that? We saved it so you can see it when you wake up.

"And stupid Alexandra Marek's picture was on the front page of the paper the day before, remember? And all her dumb cows? So she was all prepared to be really stuck-up about it, but nobody
even noticed it by the time she was back in school, because by then
your
picture had been there, and yours was much bigger and more interesting."

I paused, and Marcus took over, telling Tom of something I had forgotten. "And right in the middle of all of that about the flood," Marcus said, "the police found some of the Leboffs' silverware—a dozen forks, with a special
L
on them for Leboff—at a pawn shop in Westover. So they think the thief was heading west and just stopped to sell them there before he went on. The guy who gave him money for them notified the police later, but he couldn't really describe the thief; he just said it was an ordinary-looking man.

"But here's the funny thing, Tom," Marcus went on. "Everybody had forgotten the robbery by then, because of the flood, so the story about the forks was just a little thing on one of the back pages. Father said if it hadn't been for the flood, it would have made page one."

Marcus stopped talking for a minute, and we both watched Tom. But he didn't change. He was thinner, now, and looked more like a little boy than the young man he had been. His face was very pale. The sheet over his chest moved slowly as he breathed. His breaths were the long, silent breaths of someone barely alive.

"Tom," I said suddenly, "Marcus and I think Uncle Claude stole the Leboffs' silver. Marcus and I knew where the key was, remember? And nobody knows this, but we showed Claude. And Claude is
a rat and a rotten liar. He's a fraud, just like you said. You were right about Uncle Claude, Tom, and we haven't decided for sure yet, but maybe Marcus and I are going to tell on him someday.