Little Red Lies

by Julie Johnston

  She turns to Ruthie’s first speech in her copy of the script. She throws out lines in a hearty, comical voice, prances across the stage, throws herself into a chair, crosses her legs, and gives the male lead a broad come-hither look. I don’t know what everyone else thinks, but I’m thinking, She’s not really a teacher! She’s a human being. It isn’t long before she has us all laughing. A little more work, a little more laughter, and the play is reborn.

  Even better, she says to me, “It’s time you started earning your keep as assistant director. I need you to be solely in charge for the first thirty minutes three days a week. I’m doing catch-up lessons with some of the fifth form students.”

  “Okay,” I say. My arms aren’t even itchy. I walk home, grinning all the way.

  CHAPTER

  24

  Soon Jamie’s tubes and bottles disappear, but his recovery is slow, at least it seems slow to me. The days go by like weeks of darkness. And, then, the sun comes out. Granny and I are sitting with him in his hospital room. He wakes up, rubs his eyes, and says, “What happened to my watch?”

  Both Granny and I spring to attention. “Your watch?” I say. “You were so sleepy, you didn’t really need a watch.”

  “The nurses put it with your clothes,” Granny says.

  “Of course I need it. What were they thinking? That I was finished with time?”

  I rummage through his narrow closet and find it on the high shelf. After it’s set and wound, I buckle it on his wrist. He winces when I move his arm. “I feel as if I have toothaches in all my bones,” he says. Granny says she’ll find the nurse.

  The next day, I go with Mother to visit him. He’s cranked up to an almost sitting position. His eyes widen when he sees her. “You’re better!” he says.

  “Almost. I’ll be tip-top as soon as we get you home again.” Thinner now, she bends over and kisses him without any trouble. She smiles at him, like the mother we’ve always known.

  “What happened? How did you get better so fast? Whatever it is, how about getting some for me? I’m sick of being sick.”

  A few days later, when I come home from school, Mother and Granny are in the kitchen folding diapers. “Go up and look in Jamie’s room,” Mother says.

  I don’t even bother to put my books down. Looking a little pale, a little thin, but there in the flesh is my big brother. “Apparently, I’m a mystery to the medical world,” he says. “I’m not strictly adhering to the textbook’s description of my illness. In spite of my diagnosis, I’m thriving. I’m supposed to stay in bed for a day or two, but soon I’ll be doing push-ups and running around the block six or eight times before breakfast.”

  I deposit my books on his desk. “Maybe you should start a little slower. How about stargazing? How about fishing?”

  “Good idea. Good way to get back to normal. Where’s my fishing rod, by the way? Is it here or at the farm? I wouldn’t want old Armstrong to get hold of it.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  I want to raise the issue of the faith healer, but I’m afraid to. Even though he’s a fake, Jamie must still believe in him. That’s why he keeps bouncing back. Maybe the important word is faith, Jamie’s faith in his own ability to heal.

  We both hear the doorbell. A minute later, Ellie Cooper is standing in the doorway saying, “Knock, knock, knock. May I come in?”

  Jamie sits up higher on his pillows and says, “Please do.” Suddenly, he has color in his cheeks. Ellie Cooper looks less like Coop’s shy sister, now, and more like a pretty young woman who is finding her way in the world. She says hi to me, then directs all her attention to Jamie.

  “I got your letter. I had no idea you’d had an accident until your grandmother told my mother. What happened?”

  “Something stupid. I fell down the stairs and sort of knocked myself out.”

  I watch him smile at her as if he can barely take his eyes away. I’m beginning to feel like an outsider.

  “Really? I heard you fainted.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  He doesn’t seem to have any trouble lying, and he doesn’t need anything but his bare lips to do it.

  Ellie looks happy. “The good news is, you’re feeling better.”

  “By the minute!” He’s grinning so broadly, I’m afraid his lips will crack.

  “Well, I have to go and do my homework, now,” I say. They don’t seem heartbroken by this news. I’m not sure they even heard me. I’m moving toward the door but not going through it.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to go out for coffee,” Jamie says.

  “Maybe we will when you’re better.” Ellie pulls the desk chair a little closer to his bed and sits down, resting her chin on her knuckles.

  “How’s nursing?” he asks.

  “I like it, but they’re very strict with new students, and they work us to death, but still, it’s what I want to do. I like working with children. We have a two-week break right now.”

  “See you around, then,” I say, backing out reluctantly. Ellie nods, and Jamie ignores me. And, then, I go back in because I forgot to take my books.

  “I guess there’s still no word about Coop,” he says.

  “No, nothing at all. We haven’t lost hope, really, but we are getting back to normal. My dad isn’t as hard to live with.”

  I go into my own room but leave the door open. Pretty soon, I hear Ellie say she has to leave. Jamie makes her promise to come back. I go and stand in the doorway, not to spy on them really, just to be friendly. I like Ellie. Well, all right, I’m also a spy.

  He’s still smiling broadly. “Come back tomorrow,” he says.

  She’s laughing. “Are you sure? Don’t you need time to recuperate?”

  “I’ll improve faster if you visit me.” He looks a little embarrassed and says, “I hope that doesn’t sound too pathetic. It’s hard to be suave about making a date with a girl while you’re lying in bed, wearing striped pajamas, and looking like the ghost of Christmas past.” He stretches out a hand to her, and she takes it.

  “I’ll come tomorrow.” She has the same big open smile as Coop.

  Mrs. Hall drops in on Saturday morning, and Granny pours her a cup of coffee. “I want to know,” she says to me, “whether I can get tickets for the play at the door, or are they likely to be sold out?”

  “At the door will be fine,” I say. “The school play is never sold out. Unfortunately.”

  “Good to know. Now, tell me,” she says, changing the subject, “what are you calling the baby?”

  My parents look blankly at each other. I pipe up, “His first name is The, second name, Baby.” If Jamie had been downstairs, he’d have laughed. Nobody else does.

  “It’s getting serious,” Dad says. “I’ve got the birth registration papers on my desk waiting to be filled in and sent, but we keep putting it off.”

  “You know,” Mother says to Mrs. Hall, “I can talk about this now, but I wasn’t very well for a while, which made it hard to think of a name. Names are so important. I hate to admit this, but it needs to be said. Back then, when I was in the depths of my own personal black cave, I thought that if he went without a name, then perhaps he didn’t really exist, and that if he didn’t exist, Jamie wouldn’t feel he was being shoved aside. That’s how sick I was.”

  Dad pats her hand. “You’re better now, and that’s the main thing. It’s good to have you back.”

  Just then, as if to prove he exists, The Baby, upstairs in his crib, begins to grumble. We leave him for a bit, to see if he’ll go back to sleep.

  “This naming business is becoming pressing,” Dad says. “After all, he’s three weeks old. How about John, after my father?”

  “Mmm,” Mother says. “James has always been my favorite name for a boy. Hard to think of another. And, well, your father was a little frightening.”

  “Call him Walter, after your father,” Dad says.

  “Mmm,” she replies. “Bit stuffy.”

  “How about Ba
by X? It suits him,” I call, on my way up to fetch him down. “Gives him an aura of mystery.” He’s managed to set up quite a little howl by this time. And why not? Poor nameless, little nobody.

  This time, it takes longer for Jamie’s strength to return. He gets up and dressed every day, but has to lie down again to rest. Mostly, he lies on top of his bed. Sometimes he sits at his desk, writing in that curious booklet tied up with string. He puts it away whenever he has company. Ellie, still on her vacation, visits him when I’m at school, and when I get home, I spend time with him.

  “There’s something I want to do,” he says, after he’s been home a few days, “but I’m not sure how to do it. Look at my corkboard. Empty, except for that faded school pennant. No timetables, no group pictures, no snapshots. It’s kind of depressing. It looks as if I’m just marking time, waiting for the rest of my life to happen. Judging by my empty desk, maybe it already has.”

  “Hmm!” I say, which, I admit, isn’t very helpful. It reminds me of our last conversation with Velda. Jamie got a letter from her a while ago, telling him she’s decided to stay in Edmonton, in spite of her son’s wife. “She doesn’t want me to stay,” Velda wrote, “but I tell her to go sit on a tack.”

  I’m standing in front of Jamie’s desk, mulling over what to do with the corkboard to liven things up and thinking, I’m not scratching. My arms aren’t even itchy.

  “And look at this,” Jamie says, “the only thing on my desk is the magnifying glass you gave me for my eighteenth birthday.”

  “Did you ever use it?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Not even to start a fire?”

  He shakes his head with a resigned look. “Afraid not.”

  I say firmly, “You have a huge chunk of life left, and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “Rachel!” Downstairs my mother is bellowing. “You should be studying. Your exams are coming up.”

  “Okay, okay!” I stomp loudly across the hall to my room, shut my door firmly, open it quietly, and tiptoe back to Jamie’s room. He’s still staring at his empty corkboard but frowns when I turn up again.

  “Go,” he says.

  “Make me.”

  He lies down on his bed, his arm across his forehead. His sigh sounds like he’s giving up.

  “Look,” I say, “you’re forgetting the faith healer.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m ignoring him. He was a fraud.”

  I swallow and say, “Oh?”

  “It was in the Toronto papers, months ago.”

  “So all this time you’ve known, and you didn’t say a word?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”

  “For me! But I knew.” And then I tell him that I saw the faith healer treat the same guy twice, with the same miraculous results.

  “Aren’t we the suckers!” he says, as we smile ruefully at each other.

  Just then, Mother sticks her head around his door and screeches at me for not being in my room, studying. I think it’s safe to say, she’s entirely back to normal. I leave Jamie’s room without solving his corkboard problem. But, I’m getting ideas.

  It isn’t until the next day when, home from school, I start providing him with a lifetime of memories. The first thing I do is bring him the picture from my room of Coop and him, together with their fishing rods and their meager catch. “Here’s a memory for you. That’s what you need in here.”

  Next, I explore the back of his closet, spreading my finds out on his desk. There are snapshots, clippings from school yearbooks, sports articles from the newspaper, and a lucky fish lure that Coop gave him, the time he had his tonsils out. I discover the map of the night skies and put it on his desk. Under some books, I find a picture he took, with the camera he got for his eighteenth birthday, of the sprawling old climbing tree, down by the swale.

  His fishing rod comes in from the garage, next. It’s mounted like a trophy on the wall above the corkboard, using picture-hanging nails.

  He picks up and studies each item I bring him. He even looks at some of them through the magnifying glass. Some he leaves on his desk; the rest he thumbtacks to his corkboard. From a desk drawer, he takes out the war clippings Dad saved for him. He looks through them and reads out the place names to me, with awe in his voice, and pain: “Normandy, Falaise, Chambois, Antwerp. I was there,” he says. “I was part of it all.”

  “We didn’t want you to go.”

  “I know. But I wanted to. I had to. And I suffered, sure, but we all did. I watched friends die, worried I’d be next. Fear was always out there, raging around and among us like a flooding river, black as blood. Yet, somehow, we carried on. Maybe we had something to believe in, even if it was only luck.” He puts the newspapers down. “I think I’m beginning to realize what its like to be a human being in the world.”

  The play is ready for performance, one only this year. When Ellie comes over, I happen to go into Jamie’s room just as he’s inviting her to go with him. “I’d love to go,” she says, “provided I can drive us in my father’s car.”

  “I’m capable of driving,” Jamie says.

  “I don’t know about that, Jamie.” I always like to get my two cents’ worth in. “When I wanted you to teach me to drive, you said the steering wheel took strong muscles for a sharp turn. And, what about the gears? You always say they’re stiff.”

  “I exaggerated.”

  Ellie says, “You’re missing the point. I just got my license and need the practice before I go back to Toronto, where I’ll probably forget how.” Jamie gallantly agrees. I think he’s secretly relieved.

  The night of the performance, I’m in the wings prompting, and from there I’m able to glimpse Jamie and Ellie. He looks tired but happy. The best part about the whole play is watching Jamie laugh, something I haven’t seen him do for a long time. He and Ellie both laugh in all the right places, look at each other, and laugh some more. Will is in the wings, too, waiting to change the sets for the next act. I beckon him closer to get a glimpse of Jamie and Ellie. We give each other conspiratorial little smiles.

  I’m tired by the time the play is finished and don’t stay long at the cast party. Will comes up beside me while I’m getting ready to leave. “I’m leaving now, too,” he says. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “Oh, good,” I say. “Ruthie wants to stay to the bitter end.” I smile at him. “Nice to have someone to walk with.” Nice that it’s Will Cooper, I think, but don’t say. The Coopers’ Ford is still in front of our house when we get there. “Why don’t you come in?” I ask.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I thought you were tired.”

  “I’m not the least bit tired,” I say. And, suddenly, I’m not.

  Will follows me inside to what is the closest thing to a party our family has witnessed in a long, long time. Dad opens soft drinks, while Granny pops popcorn, until it burns the bottom of the pot. Upstairs, the baby begins to wail, sad to be left out, I guess. Mother is already warming a bottle for him.

  Ellie says, “It must be fun to have a baby in the house. I wish we had one.”

  Mother says, “He’s just a little darling.”

  “He has changed our lives,” Dad says happily.

  In more ways than one, I think.

  Mother wraps the warm bottle in a towel and says good night, taking it upstairs with her, and soon Dad follows, with a fistful of popcorn to munch on his way upstairs.

  Granny puts the pot to soak. Before she goes up, she says, “Now don’t you younger set stay up too late. Jamie needs his beauty rest.”

  We rehash the play, eat popcorn, and laugh at some of the antics of the actors, especially Ruthie’s. She’s a good comic actress, we all agree.

  Ellie glances over at Jamie, who slouches low in a chair, looking exhausted, legs straight out in front of him. “Come on, little brother,” she says to Will, “time to go.”

  She kisses Jamie on the cheek, but he quickly grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her toward him for a rea
l kiss. If Coop were here, he’d have hooted and howled Hubba-hubba and teased the life out of both of them, but he isn’t. Ellie goes out to start the car.

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” Will calls. At the door, he smiles down at me. “Now that my rival has been banished, I think I have the nerve to ask you out. Can I phone you, sometime?”

  I feel my face turn red. Will has seen me, often enough, looking up adoringly at Mr. Tompkins, to guess the way I used to feel about him. “Don’t remind me of that phase of my life. I want to forget it.”

  He takes my hands and gives me a gentle shake. “I’m just teasing. Sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  “It’s all right. I’m sort of over it.” When I look up, he’s smiling, and I remember how much I’ve always liked the way he smiles. So I tell him. Dumb thing to say.

  He looks a little puzzled. “Does that mean yes, I can phone you?”

  “Oh. Yes, of course.”

  Ellie softly calls her brother from the open car window, not wanting to waken the entire neighborhood. He leaps, like a pole-vaulter, down the steps, turning once to look back before he gallops to the car. I like his energy. Maybe it’s him I like.

  CHAPTER

  25

  It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I have the dreamlike feeling that I’m just beginning to find my way, after being lost, somehow, between the pages of a very long, very difficult book. Not one I can even begin to understand. Maybe I never will. I would be happy simply to close the cover and put it away on some shelf at the back of my mind, but it’s not that easy.

  I can faintly hear my parents. Standing still, I listen. “The baby will grow up in a far different world.” I think that’s what my mother says.

  “Indeed, he will,” Dad says. “He’s a child for modern times.”

  “He’s a darling,” Mother says.

  “Tonight, in the kitchen,” Dad says, “with the kids, and the popcorn, and everything lighthearted, I had the curious feeling that the lights were gradually becoming brighter. Or else, everything was taking on intense color, as if we’ve all been putting up with a kind of tarnished existence. Life goes on,” he says, “whether we poor humans will it to or not.”