If I Die Before I Wake

by Jean Little

  Aunt started to sponge off the fox fur but Miss Trimmer snatched it away and stalked out the door. I hope she is so disgusted by what happened that she won’t be back. I don’t think this is at all likely though. She and Grandmother have become bosom friends.

  I put Theo to bed tonight and he was still sniffling. I told him I knew Father could not have hurt him that badly and he looked up at me and said he wasn’t crying about that.

  “I am just so sad for that poor fox,” he said, and his voice was trembling. “He loved the den I made for him. Oh, Fee, she is so cruel to him. She makes him bite his poor tail.”

  That is how the fur fastens, with the fox’s mouth snapped onto the base of its tail. I felt sorry for that fox myself, by the time I’d listened to Theo.

  Then he told me something I ought to have guessed. Before Miss T. missed her fox fur, she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. Theo did not realize she was in there and he opened the door just in time to see her putting her false teeth back in. “They come out, Fee,” he said, his eyes wide. “They are all in a row on a pink thing.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “I didn’t wait to hear,” Theo said. “I don’t think she heard me. I escaped with the speed of lightning.”

  I ought to have figured out that they were false. They are so big and whiter than anybody else’s. I wish Theo had said, “What big teeth you have, Dulcie!” When I told Fan, we laughed and laughed.

  Thursday, February 20, 1919

  After they went to the Daffydil, William stopped coming around. Nobody quite understands why. But Jo is like a puppy who has lost the wag in its tail. William has sent no word. I think Jo has talked to Carrie but she does not know either, except there is a new girl going to the Student Christian Volunteer meetings.

  “What’s the matter with the boy?” Father said. He hates to see Jo upset.

  Then my Aunt Rose reached out and patted his shoulder.

  “It’s all part of growing up, David. We had our disappointments ourselves and survived. They will, too. As we both know, even deep wounds heal.”

  She gave him the strangest look. That is what made me remember what they said. It seemed to mean more than just the words we all heard. As though they were speaking a secret language.

  I sat there, watching them, trying to fathom it and not be noticed.

  He looked back at her, as if he had forgotten about Jo and Carrie. Jane, he looked like the young man in Aunt’s picture.

  “Wounds leave scars,” he said in such a quiet voice. Then he turned away from us and went into his study without another word.

  Is it just my imagination that there is something between them? I do not believe so. But there is nothing I can do about it, not until I learn more.

  Friday, February 21, 1919

  Last night, I had just written that much when our bedroom door opened and Aunt walked in. I shut my journal fast and I think I went red but if she noticed, she gave no sign. She just told me to stop writing and go to sleep, so I had to stop.

  I wonder what Father meant by “Wounds leave scars.” Does he have some hidden wound? Does Aunt know about it? She had a strange expression on her face after he walked out. I have not told Fanny about the photograph. I almost have a couple of times, but I decided to wait. I would have to confess to prying — even though it was by accident.

  Saturday, February 22, 1919

  I asked Aunt how you know when you are truly in love. I thought I was so clever. She laughed.

  “Fiona Rose, you will know,” she said. “You may know more than once, but you will know. Now I want to hear your memory work.”

  She has always been good at changing the subject. But I love reciting memory work. This time it was a sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It starts out, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways …”

  When I finished, Aunt wiped away two tears and laughed and told me I might be headed for the stage. Me and Sarah Bernhardt!

  But were those tears really for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love for Robert, or for Aunt’s memory of Father?

  Sunday, February 23, 1919

  It was the Sabbath all day long and I will not tell you about it, Jane, or you will be as sick of being quiet and well-behaved as I was. When Miss Dulcie Trimmer happened by in the evening to “visit” with her dear friend, I came up here and wrote that much. Now I am going to sleep. Tomorrow will be better. At least it will not be the Sabbath.

  Tuesday, February 25, 1919

  Too much schoolwork to write in here yesterday but I MUST tell you about my discovery.

  I was dusting the front room and I found a small, leather-bound copy of Sonnets from the Portuguese in Aunt’s chair, hidden under her mending. It was open at the very poem I memorized. I learned it from a school anthology and never knew we had this book in the house. When I picked it up, I saw this inscribed on the flyleaf, written in old, slightly faded writing: For R. with love for always. From D.

  I was standing staring at it when I thought I heard her coming. I shoved it back out of sight. But it wasn’t Aunt. It was Father. So, Jane, I pretended to be leaving the room and managed to push the mending to the floor as I went. I glanced back, Jane, and he was staring down at the book. I was longing to stay and ask questions but his face looked … looked like Theo’s when he has had his feelings hurt. So I just kept going.

  But, Jane, R. must mean Rose and D. must mean David, don’t you agree?

  Jo, by the way, went to a hockey game at school with another boy so I guess her heart is not permanently broken. She came home laughing at his jokes.

  Wednesday, February 26, 1919

  No new revelations. Just slushy old February. I long for spring. Miss Dulcie Trimmer does not let the weather keep her home though. She and Grandmother have started working on some quilting project together and she has to come by almost every day. Aunt tries to get out of inviting her to stay to eat with us but Grandmother just says, bold as brass, “I know Rose is hoping you will stay and have supper with us, Dulcie.”

  Poor Aunt. She tries protesting that it is not much of a supper but Miss Trimmer always says she will be happy with bread and butter. Then she trills with laughter — like Aunt Jessica’s canary, Piccolo. It is a nice song when a canary sings it but not when it is supposed to be a merry laugh.

  Thursday, February 27, 1919

  I think and think about Father and Aunt and I make plans to find out more but my courage runs out at the last moment.

  We are studying Shakespeare’s soliloquies at school and Macbeth has my sympathy when he says that bit about, “If it were done when it is done, then ’twere well it were done quickly …” Something like that. I would like to rush at it and get it over with but I cannot.

  I am waiting for one more moment of truth, Jane. What should I actually DO? Suppose the two of them stare at me blankly and say, “For heaven’s sake, Fee, what are you going on about?” Then what would I say?

  Friday, February 28, 1919

  Went to the dentist today after being awake all night with a toothache. He pulled it and Theo told me to put it under my pillow for the fairies. I gave it to him. He wrote the fairies a letter telling them it was mine but I had given it to him. The fairies had better give him something. I must remind Aunt before I go upstairs.

  March 1919

  Saturday, March 1, 1919

  Theo got a bright silver ten-cent piece. Good for the fairies.

  The troops are being sent home at last. It must seem queer to have the War end and yet not be properly over. Helga was saying that the older brother in the house where she lives is expected soon. While he has been overseas, his older sister died of the Flu. It will seem so terrible to him. At least, I think it will.

  There will be a lot of families trying to live through such mixtures of joy and sorrow.

  Later

  Aunt sent me up to Father’s room with some clean clothes that had been overlooked in the clothes basket. I made a startling discovery. I know I was
poking my nose into things that are none of my business, but I can’t help wondering about that picture in Aunt’s bureau drawer. I was wandering about, looking at the books on his shelves. And I found, high up, a row of seven small diaries! I was just flipping through one dated 1898 and catching sight of the name Rose when Aunt called me to come and set the table for supper. I ran down and I stared at her and I almost asked her about the time when she was young, but I remembered what they had said about wounds. So I got out the knives and forks. But I did it all backwards.

  “Fee, what were you thinking of?” she asked, pointing out my muddle.

  “You would be amazed,” I told her.

  Jane, should I go back and read more?

  No, I should not.

  Will I go back? Of course I will.

  But, Jane, if you ever find a diary of mine which I have not said you may read, Hands off.

  I keep telling myself that it was more than twenty years ago so it should not bring the house down around our ears, whatever I decide to do.

  I don’t convince myself.

  Sunday, March 2, 1919

  You would be amazed how hard it is to go into Father’s room and help myself to one of his journals and come out again without attracting attention. It seems impossible. I get right up to the door and then I hear him doing something in the room and I run like a rabbit. This has happened several times.

  Since today was Sunday, everyone was home all day after church was over, which made it extra difficult.

  Once I heard him coming and it was not him at all. It was Jo returning a book he had loaned her.

  “Were you looking for me, Fee?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, stammering and going red right up to my hair. Then I fled, leaving her mystified. She has had her eye on me ever since.

  Monday, March 3, 1919

  Tonight Grandmother shocked and upset all of us. Halfway through dinner, Jane, she turned to Aunt and said, “Theodore will soon be off to school. What do you plan to do, Rose, when David no longer needs you? The girls are certainly old enough to take over the housekeeping. I think you’ve given up enough of your life to serve your sister’s children, don’t you?”

  There was a frozen moment of utter silence. We were all struck dumb and we were all horrified. I was frightened, to tell the truth. I felt my breath catch and it was as though I was choking.

  It was so strange. Father shot a look at Aunt and then stared down at his soup bowl as though he had been turned to stone. It was up to him to speak but he said not one word.

  Aunt made a queer little noise, like a hiccough. Then she said, “The girls are a great help to me right now, Mrs. Macgregor. But Theodore is not even in school. I have made no plans yet. Please excuse me.”

  She did not run out of the room but I could tell she wanted to. She simply rose and walked out to the kitchen as though she was getting the pudding but she did not come back.

  “She can’t leave us!” I shouted at my grandmother. I made the shout loud enough to break through to my father, too, where he sat silent as a stick of wood. It is the first time I have ever longed to hit him.

  “No, she can’t,” Fan put in, joining in breaking through.

  And Jo said something cutting to our granmother, something I did not catch.

  Jane, I say I shouted at her. It was really a shriek. And I am scared of Grandmother most of the time, even though I never admit it.

  But Father only got up at last to leave the room. He had not finished his soup. Theo pointed this out but nobody paid him any mind. Father’s back was ramrod straight but he went on not saying anything.

  Tuesday, March 4, 1919

  We were sent to bed and I could not finish, but here is the rest of the story of what happened last night. Remember that I had said Aunt could not leave us.

  Grandmother pinned me to my chair with her needling look and started in. “Fiona, consider how selfish you are being,” she said in her voice of sugar and ice. “Your aunt is not an old woman like me. She has a good many years in which to make a home of her own.”

  We heard Aunt go upstairs. Father had gone to his study and closed the door behind him. With a bang that said something. But nobody knew what.

  If I had shut it that way, Jane, they would have said I “slammed” it and ordered me to come back and shut it properly. Nobody called to him to do any such thing.

  Then Theo, who did not understand anything except that Aunt was unhappy, jumped up, knocking over his chair, and scampered straight up the stairs to the room the two of them share.

  “Mama, don’t!” we heard him cry out.

  Then we heard that door close, too. Another sharp bang.

  At that point Grandmother barked at the rest of us, “You girls stay right where you are. You are not done and you have not been excused.”

  We sat still as tombstones, Jane, all of us silently hating her but not one of us knowing what to do about it.

  It was dreadful.

  Grandmother went the colour of stewed rhubarb and read us a lecture on being insolent to our elders. She finished off by saying, “It is high time somebody took you children in hand. Josephine thinks herself a grown woman, I can see, but you two and Theo should have some proper behaviour dinned into you before it is too late. I’m not the only one who thinks you are disrespectful. Your manners are disgraceful. Miss Trimmer and I have discussed the problem often and I am sorry, but I will have to do a little plain speaking to my son.”

  And all I could picture, hearing her, was that Miss Trimmer with her big toothy smile which reminded me of a crocodile. I could not forget the way Grandmother had acted. She had said something that day in the tea shop, something that made no sense to me when I heard it. I ransacked my brain until the words came back to me and now they seemed clear as crystal: “Give me time, Dulcie my dear, to clear the way for you.”

  Could she possibly have meant what I am imagining she did? If I am right, she is wicked. I also think she is crazy. I cannot believe Aunt would ever leave us. Nor would Father turn to Dulcie Trimmer for comfort, even if Aunt did desert us. He never would do such a brainless thing. Why would he want help from Dulcie Trimmer to make us behave? If Grandmother left, I realized, we would behave just fine. But what if she did not leave? What if she somehow caught him in her Trimmer trap?

  I will have to do something drastic. I will have to save the day. Why me? Because I think I am the only one who knows most of the story. But how, Jane? I wish you were here to give me some good advice. And some gumption. Fan is a little too soft-hearted and biddable to be a perfect plotter.

  Aunt’s picture is the only thing I can think of. And perhaps something from one of Father’s diaries. If I fetched the picture down … But do I dare? Oh, Jane, help me find the way out of this tangle. Tomorrow I will go and look, even if I do get caught doing it.

  Wednesday, March 5, 1919

  After everyone is asleep

  Jane, I did it.

  I know what happened now. I had to lie to get my chance. When it was time for Prayer Meeting, I said, “My head aches and I have a pain in my stomach.” I knew Aunt would believe me. I started bleeding two months ago. Fan started a week later. Trust my twin to keep up to me in every way possible.

  Jo had gone off with Miss Banks’s Sunday School class and Aunt had to put Theo to bed and she had a book to read. Fan accompanied Grandmother and Father to Prayer Meeting.

  The minute I knew they were all out of the way, I sprang up from my bed and pain and went, bold as brass, straight into Father’s room and pulled down the book. I found the right volume at once by sheer luck. I opened it to a page that began, I have made a terrible mistake.

  I am not going to copy it all out, but it is like a novel. Father told Aunt Rose he was in love with the two of them and he could not decide which one to marry. He was half teasing, half trying out the idea on her. She answered in a cool voice that he would have to decide for himself, but she could tell him right then that she had no interest in marryin
g any man who didn’t know his own mind.

  He was so stupid.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll propose to Ruth first and see what she has to say.”

  “You do that, David,” said my Aunt Rose.

  He met my mother later that day and blurted out, “How would you feel if I were to ask you to marry me, Ruth?”

  And she threw her arms around his neck and said, “I’ve been longing for you to speak. Yes, yes, yes, David. I will love to marry you.”

  He did not know what to do. She was so overjoyed. She said she must go right away to tell her sister. He could not stop her. And Rose said she was happy for her sister.

  Father managed to get Rose away by herself a couple of days later and he started to explain. He said he had really known all along that she was the one he loved. But she refused him. She could not break Ruth’s heart, she told him. And if he broke his engagement to Ruth, she said, he would end by losing them both. I wonder, might Mother have already hinted to Aunt that she was sweet on David Macgregor, so that clinched it?

  She made him promise never to tell Ruth and never to speak of it to her again, either. Poor Father. I don’t know why they didn’t straighten it out after Mother died but I think I can guess. By then, he had grown to love my mother. I know he loved her by the time I can remember them. He has told us of her so tenderly. And Aunt was keeping house for him. And we were all grieving.

  Wounds leave scars. They do shrink as time passes but they are there long after the healing is done. He wrote those words in the book. I must put it back and watch for the right moment. I cannot believe he is so slow that he does not know that Aunt still cares for him. I cannot believe that he will let her go again.

  Friday, March 7, 1919

  I have not been able to write to you because I have thought about nothing but Father and Aunt and Mother for two days and I have decided what to do. I’ll do it tonight when we are in bed and the house is quiet.