Downstairs, I make him a bottle. The mere thought of food gives me butterflies. While the milk is warming, I bounce the baby, trying to keep him quiet. Lipstick! I try to put it on without a mirror. Oops! I must look like a freak.
To make sure the baby doesn’t wake everybody, I take him outside to the front veranda, where we sit in one of the wicker chairs, facing the street. He sucks eagerly at the bottle, and I hold him closely, the way Granny taught me. He puts one tiny hand on top of mine.
The refreshing scent of lilacs wafts on a warm breeze. It’s going to be a gorgeous day for our trip. I imagine getting up beside Tommy in the borrowed truck. He’ll reach out to take my hand. Maybe kiss it. We’ll drive a few miles out of town, and then he’ll say, Do you mind if I stop for a moment? I feel a tiny, electric prick of fear, when I think of him pulling the truck off the road. I don’t know why, unless it means that, by then, I’ll be powerless to change my mind.
I decide to change the script. We’ll keep driving. If he wants to kiss me, and I hope he will, he can wait until we get to the Henley Falls high school. It will be every bit as sweet, every bit as exciting.
If this were a romance involving two fictitious people, however, I would definitely pull them off the road, where they could give full vent to their passion. Steamy kisses behind steamed-up windows, hands exploring—
Exploring what?
This is real life. The hero is a teacher. Teachers, in real life, do not make love to students. Do they? There must be a rule against it. Not even in the fiction pages of Ladies’ Home Journal would this happen.
But, wait. Why not? There’s always a first time. For a hazy moment, I’m back into my romance. Tommy’s jaw, the shadow of a beard, hair on the backs of his wrists, his eager hands.
A slight rumbling sound means the baby just filled his diaper. How romantic!
I pat his back to burp him, and he obliges, spitting up milk down the front of my sweater.
Suddenly, I’m shivering. The personal romance I’ve been concocting makes me feel a little sick. My watch tells me I should be at the school, by now. Mr. Tompkins will wonder where I am. Still, I sit on the veranda. I’ll go in a minute, as soon as my skin stops feeling hot and prickly, as if I’m drifting toward danger.
Just as the baby falls asleep, a red truck drives slowly past our house with Tommy at the wheel. He must have seen me on the veranda because, in a few moments, he comes back, going the other way. He stops. My insides quivering, I stand up and start down the veranda steps. His dark eyes are filled with love for me and me alone! I see this clearly. He looks puzzled, but he’s smiling. His hair, slanting across his forehead, makes me sigh. I want to touch it. I’m hooked, as I knew I would be the minute I saw him, again. I am drawn like a fish into a net. I picture myself drifting toward him, floating. He reaches for me. Our lips touch.
“I thought you were coming with me.” He has his head out the window.
“I am. I …” I’m aware, now, of the bundle in my arms. No longer asleep, my baby brother opens his mouth and howls. I jiggle him, trying to soothe him before my entire family wakes up and runs out of the house to find out what’s going on. Maybe they’ll think I’m just showing off my new brother to my teacher. I hold him up to the truck window, and the baby promptly vents his opinion by throwing up what looks like a gallon of curdled milk, right through the open window. It lands on the shoulder of Tommy’s open-necked shirt. Some might have gone down inside.
I am mortified. “I’m so sorry! He does this all the time. I should have … here, use this.” I extricate a vomity baby blanket and try to shove it through the window to Mr. Tompkins, who backs away in horror. Looking as if he might be the next to throw up, he swipes at his shirt with his clean pocket handkerchief.
I use a corner of the blanket to wipe my brother’s chin, then sling it back over my shoulder. The angora’s a mess now, anyway. Holding the baby in the crook of my arm, I make soothing noises to him.
Mr. Tompkins looks as sour as he now smells. “Well, are you coming or not?”
The baby finds my finger and holds on with all his might.
I have to say something. “I—I can’t go.” It sounds like a wail. Next, I’ll be crying, bawling.
Looking straight ahead, Tommy continues to scowl. “May I ask why not?”
I want to scratch my arms, but my hands are full. I need to answer. “Um.” Think. “My, um, brother won’t let me.” I have to bite my lip to keep back a shriek of manic laughter.
Mr. Tompkins gives me a disgusted glance. “Fine. You might at least have let me know in advance. Your friend Ruth would have been happy to help out.”
“Ruthie?”
Mr. Tompkins rolls up the window and drives off, leaving nothing but exhaust fumes and emptiness. The sensation lasts only a moment, because almost immediately, I know I’m light as air.
I fly inside with the baby and take him up to his crib. He’s probably going to cry, but I hope I can get back to my room before anyone else hears him and gets up. I just make it. Quickly, I take off my smelly clothes, pitch them into the back of the closet to deal with later, and change into my Saturday grubbies—shapeless slacks and an old plaid shirt of Jamie’s.
Opening my door a crack, I peek out. The coast is clear. I hurry down the stairs and grab an apple from a bowl on the kitchen table because I’m starving. Quickly, I scrawl a note to say I fed the baby and escape outside. My plan is to walk up to the school, hang around for a little while, then come home and say something like, It didn’t take as long as we thought it would. Lots of people there to help. Or something. A smear of lipstick comes off onto the apple as I bite into it.
I don’t really need my made-up alibi because no one comments on my early return from the school. Dad’s gone back to work, and Granny’s sipping her coffee with the newspaper open in front of her. Everyone else is upstairs. “It’s quiet around here for a change,” I say.
“Blessedly quiet. I might even get to finish reading the paper.”
“Don’t do anything rash.”
I’m in the middle of buttering some toast, when I hear the dull thud and then silence. Granny and I put down what we’re doing and frown at each other. Then we hear Mother’s shriek.
CHAPTER
23
The baby? White with panic, Granny races out of the kitchen, with me so close behind I’m nearly on top of her. I don’t know what to expect—the baby, like a broken doll, lifeless on the floor?
In the hall, I look up to see Mother staring down in horror over the banister, moaning into her hands, “Oh, no, oh, no!” The back of my neck tingles as hair stands up like hackles. I scream. On the stairs, near the bottom, Jamie lies crumpled.
I practically fly to him, crying, screaming, trying to pick him up. Granny keeps yelling at me to leave him, not to try to lift him. I look up the stairs just as Mother, running down, trips on the hem of her nightgown. I throw myself across Jamie to protect him, afraid she’ll land on top of us. She catches hold of the banister and seems to glide the rest of the way down.
Mother is transformed. It’s as if the screaming and panic slashed the curtain she’d drawn across her mind. Suddenly she takes charge. “Give him some air,” she says, tugging me away. Together we manage to get him into a more comfortable position. His eyes are closed, as if he’s sound asleep.
I sit on the hall floor whimpering, chewing my knuckles. “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he? Isn’t he!” It’s not a question. I squeeze past Mother and put my ear next to Jamie’s chest, but all I hear is my own heart thumping madly.
Granny phones the ambulance, then Dad at the store. They both reach the house at the same time.
While men come in with a stretcher, my parents cling together, as if they’ve just found each other after a long search. As the men skillfully move Jamie onto the stretcher, I notice how drawn my father’s face is, how deeply lined, his eyes hallow, dark with pain. He looks breakable. He’s always been the backbone of the family, but now,
I see that, like the rest of us, he isn’t indestructible. He rubs the back of his hand across his eyes and says, “I’ll follow the ambulance in the car.”
I’m not sure how long the baby’s been wailing. Granny has her arms around me, comforting me. “He’s going to be fine, just fine. You’ve got to stop crying.” I’m not even aware that I’m crying.
Over Granny’s shoulder, I catch a glimpse of Mother, alone on the stairs, left out. Upstairs, the little alien howls his heart out. It’s as though Mother realizes that there are only two people left to comfort each other. She hurries up the stairs.
Sometime later, looking distractedly out the living room window, I’m aware of Mother behind me, dressed, cradling the baby in her arms. “Rachel,” she says softly, “can you look after him for a while?”
“Sure.”
“Iris,” she says to Granny, “would you be kind enough to drive me to the hospital?”
“Certainly.”
I feel ridiculous now, remembering my fear that the baby might have been dropped over the banister. A bit like my image of Hazel Carrington’s mother, wandering around with an ice pick up her sleeve, looking for someone to murder. That’s what comes of having an overly active imagination.
I hold my sleeping brother in the crook of my arm, watching through the window as Mother and Granny drive off in the truck. I can’t help puzzling over the change in Mother. She makes me think of an abandoned sailboat, becalmed for weeks. Now, with the wind at her back, she’s able to sail bravely forward. But, to where? That’s the question we all face. Maybe she’ll be a lifeboat coming to our rescue, because that’s what we need right now—me, my brother, brothers I mean, my dad—something, anyway, to keep us all from floundering, drowning.
Tubes, bottles, the antiseptic smell of the hospital, and Jamie only half-awake. That’s what greets Granny and me when we visit Jamie the next day, Sunday. Afterwards, on the way home, Granny says, “I meant to ask you before, but so much has happened that it slipped my mind. Who was in that truck that pulled up in front of the house, early yesterday morning? I happened to look out the window and thought I saw you talking to someone.”
“Oh, that,” I begin. I feel little stabs of panic under my skin. I can make something up. Or—bizarre thought—I can confess everything and face the consequences. I am suddenly exhausted. I think of that stupid little tube of aptly named lipstick and all the troubles I’ve been trying to avoid with my colorful lies. I have a momentary picture of myself taking an ice pick from up my sleeve, skewering that red stick, and pitching the whole thing off the edge of the world. Granny’s looking at me, instead of the road, and narrowly misses sideswiping a parked car.
“It’s a long story, Granny. Maybe you should park the truck first.” And so, once we get home and into the house, it all comes out. Mother has just made a pot of tea and put out a plate of Granny’s homemade cookies. We all sit down at the kitchen table. The baby is asleep upstairs. “Um,” I begin as soon as we sit down. “I have a confession.”
“Eat first, sing later,” Granny says. My parents look at us curiously.
“How’s Jamie doing, now?” Dad asks.
“Still a bit dopey, but he’s doing fine.”
Granny prods me to finish my cookie, but I’m not hungry.
I push my chair back from the table, in case I have to make a quick getaway, and sit with my arms folded in front of me, like armor. I have to clear my throat once or twice, but I tell them everything in a level voice, at first, including the near kiss in the auditorium. Finally, tearfully, haltingly, I admit that I have been so much in love with Mr. Tompkins that I wanted to run away with him, would have, in fact, if it had come to that. Every sordid detail comes out, before I weep into my hands. I’m not crying about Mr. Tompkins, though. My grief is for the end of love. Every sweet, remembered morsel of how I once felt has gone sour, putrefied, and slithered right down the drain.
Mother puts her arms around me, rocking slightly. Dad hands me his handkerchief. A minute or so later, we calm down.
“The man should be horsewhipped,” Granny says. “He’s been setting you up.”
“At least you had the brains not to go with him yesterday,” Mother says.
“I think this would be of some interest to, not only the principal, but the school board,” Dad says. “Do you know of any other girls who might be … involved with him?”
“I wasn’t involved; I was in love.” I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
“I think you know what I mean.”
I remember the look of near panic I sometimes saw on Hazel’s face, when she looked up to see Mr. Tompkins’ eyes on her, in English class. I wonder if the reason she’s gone away to live with her grandmother has something to do with Mr. Tompkins’ unwanted attention. And then, there’s Ruthie. She’s been a Tommy fan, right from the start. I remember Mr. Tompkins suggesting that Ruthie would have gone with him to Henley Falls. How did he know that?
I have to face a moment of truth. What would be the honorable thing to do? Should I involve Ruthie and Hazel or allow them their privacy? “There might be others,” I say, “but they might not want the gossip.”
Granny says, “If you saw a hungry wolf slinking into town, would you warn your neighbors?”
“Well, sure … but that’s different.”
“A predator is a predator.”
Tears are running down my face again. “There’s a possibility that Hazel Carrington is involved in some way. And maybe …” I’m losing my voice, so I whisper, “Maybe Ruthie. I don’t know for sure. I’d have to ask her.”
Mother hugs me again.
Dad says, “There-there.”
“But, if I am the only one,” I say, “Ruthie will be mad as hops if she thinks I’m trying to mix her up in this.” I put my hands over my face and howl again. And then the baby wakes up and howls, too. Oddly, this has a calming effect on me.
By the time we all get a grip on our emotions, things move pretty quickly. I phone Ruthie and tell her everything, all the stuff that happened at school, all the stuff after school, my near elopement, even though that part, at least, was only my wishful thinking.
After she squeals Good Lord and You’re kidding a few times, Ruthie confesses that Mr. Tompkins has been flirting with her, too. “Not only that,” she says, “he actually sneaked into the girls’ dressing room, while I was alone, trying on a costume. I was wearing only my slip, and he just stood there, staring at me. I thought I would die. He told me I had the figure of a goddess.”
“A goddess?” Now it’s my turn for Good Lord and You’re kidding. “What a horrid man!” I screech. I’m also thinking, a goddess? Is he blind?
“And listen to this,” Ruthie says, “my sister, Joan, who always hears the gossip, said that Hazel Carrington left town because Tompkins kept trying to put his arms around her while he was counseling her. He said she needed to be caressed to get over the trauma of having an alcoholic mother. Caressed! So what do you think of that?”
“Alcoholic mother?”
“Yes, very sad. She’s away somewhere getting treatment.”
“Oh.” My madwoman in the attic with the lethal ice pick just got tossed out the window for a second time.
“Listen,” I say, “Tommy is a creep, the worst kind of creep there is. Tell your parents about him spying on you. Tell them to phone my parents.”
In her usual blunt way, Ruthie asks, “So are you still in love with him?”
“No, I hate him. Actually I hate myself because I loved the attention so much.”
“I know what you mean. I was completely flattered that he liked me.”
“Now, I could almost throw up. I must be such a despicable person,” I say. “I loved being with him. I really did. It was like being in a romantic movie that you never want to end. But, now, now that it has ended, all I have is me, looking foolish, hating myself.”
“You’ll get over it. I’m already over it, sort of.”
“I wish I could
simply shed my skin and get rid of that part of me that needed him to touch me. I wish I could just peel it off and throw it on the floor.”
“I wonder if Hazel is over it.”
“Of course then I’d have to get out the vacuum cleaner and Hoover it up before my mother saw it. And it would probably jam up the works, and then I’d be in trouble for breaking the Hoover.”
“Rachel?”
“What?”
“You have an insane imagination.”
This is what it’s like to live in a small place like Middleborough. Time has a will of its own. Events can occur, sometimes, with the speed of lightning. I hear my father making phone calls and hear him say, a little later, that he’s going to a meeting at the school.
On Monday morning, Mr. Tompkins is not at school. The halls and classrooms are abuzz with rumors and half-truths and complete untruths. Ruthie and I make a pact that we won’t add a thing. We practice shrugging our shoulders.
In English class, there’s a substitute teacher who looks way older than Tommy. She’s a short, lively, butterball of a woman, with a voice like a sergeant major and red hair that won’t stay pinned up in a bun. Her name is Mrs. Borke. Life at school descends into the mundane.
I drag myself to drama that afternoon to witness the rehearsal of the hopeless play. Mrs. Borke is, of course, the new director. She watches the actors run lifelessly through their roles, hands on her hips, hair straggling around her ears. When it’s over, no one says a word. It seems that Mr. Tompkins has stolen the play’s very life and taken it away with him, wherever he is.
“Well, now,” says Mrs. Borke, at the end. “Wasn’t that a pathetic little offering!” She marches up and down the stage. “This play is supposed to be a comedy,” she roars. “I didn’t feel like cracking a smile, not even once.” She peers around at cast and crew through her round-rimmed spectacles. “It’s supposed to be a thigh-slapper! You have to play to the audience. Tickle them. Make ’em laugh till they cry.”
Little Red Lies Page 22