of Ladies Home Journal in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
“But Mummy . . .,” Irene would have stamped her foot had she not known it would lead to a smack on the bottom.
“Don’t but Mummy me. You’re too cheeky by far these days, my girl. If I tell you to do something, you do it.”
“Yes, Mummy.” Irene slipped on her plaid jacket and did up the toggle buttons.
“I won’t have you out there with those ragamuffins. You are not to go to the lot. No baseball. Understand?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Good. Now get along, you’ll be late. And give me a kiss.”
Irene trudged to school on the verge of tears. Something was wrong and nobody would tell her anything. How could her father say to go along with it for just a little while? A little while? It had been months and months and forever. It was so unfair. Something was changing.
Irene knew she was changing, and this was a strange thing to know. As her mother became more and more nervous, as her father referred to it, Irene became very good at several things. She made a list of them as she walked along. She was good at being small. At being quiet. And it was as though she had another set of eyes and ears, attuned to things outside the range of normal seeing and hearing. Like cats who could see ghosts or dogs that could hear whistles too high-pitched for humans. She was getting very good at being able to detect, from even the smallest signals, what sort of mood her mother was in. Because she wasn’t always unhappy. She wasn’t always mean. Sometimes she laughed and laughed and wanted to dance to jazz music on the radio. But when she was nervous it was important to know as quickly as possible, so that Irene could adjust herself accordingly.
Irene also knew that she must not speak to her friends about what was the matter at home, because, as her father kept telling her, nothing whatsoever was the matter. He’d made that very clear. Should anyone ask, nothing was wrong.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with Mrs. MacNeil no way,” said Jimmy Thompson, who tried to sound tough. He wore the same grey flannel pants and navy blazer as the other boys, but his trousers had a torn knee and there was a smear of jam on his jacket. There were rumours about what Jimmy’s father did for a living. Some said he was a bootlegger, but most agreed he ran an illegal gambling operation. These things gave Jimmy Thompson a certain mystery and authority. “Nothing wrong in her body anyways. She’s just nuts. Me and Charlie saw her burying something out in the garden late one night. I swear it to God.”
“Don’t swear, Jimmy, it isn’t nice,” said Violet, who always wore something to match her name. Today it was ribbons tied at the end of her thick brown braids.
“I bet it was a body,” piped up Charlie, Jimmy’s younger brother. They had the same freckled faces and might have been gap-toothed twins except that Charlie was so much smaller.
“Wasn’t big enough,” said Jimmy as he picked his grimy fingernails with a pocketknife. “I’ll bet it was a box of money.”
“Coulda been a baby,” insisted Charlie, thrilled at the horror of it.
“What were you two doing out at night?” said Ebbie Watkins. “You live over on Prospect Street, you can’t see Irene’s yard from your house, and besides, your mother makes you go to bed at eight.”
“We can get out if we want to. My mother don’t have to know everything.”
“Oh, you’re just telling tales, Jimmy Thompson. You don’t know anything about Mrs. MacNeil.”
“I know that lady’s crazy. My ma says so.”
And nobody said much after that, because it was true that Irene’s mother was different. It used to be that she would send out pitchers of lemonade to them as they roller-skated up and down the street on a hot day, or call them in for chocolate after they’d come back, half frozen and blue, from skating on the rink set up every year in Allen Gardens. Now she wouldn’t even let Irene out to play baseball. Their mothers told them not to talk about it, held their fingers to their lips and shook their heads, with a pitying sort of look on their faces.
Ebbie Watkins was Irene’s best friend. Ebbie was tall for eleven, with curly hair so blond it was almost white and lashes and eyebrows that might just as well not have been there at all. Her skin was pale and her eyes protruded slightly, so that Irene’s mother said she looked like a partly skinned rabbit. Irene didn’t think it was nice of her mother to say such things about Ebbie. Had Irene said them herself, her mother would have given her a swat and a lecture about kindness to others. What Ebbie lacked in pretty, however, she made up for in smart.
As Irene rounded the last corner in front of Winchester Public School, Ebbie ran up behind her and jumped the last step almost on Irene’s heels.
“Boo!” she yelled.
“Oh! You scared me half to death, Ebbie!”
“You looked like you were a thousand miles away.” Ebbie’s laugh was always a surprise. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Your mother not getting any better? I know maybe I shouldn’t ask. Everyone says I shouldn’t. Well, not everyone, it’s not like everyone’s talking or anything, but my mother says . . . Oh, you know what I mean. But we’re friends and all, so . . . Whatever is wrong with her, anyway?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” said Irene, but seeing Ebbie’s eyes widen skeptically, she added, “Not really. Daddy says her nerves are bad and she’s fragile. It’s a sign of good breeding, you know.” She paused and thought. “My mother’s got awfully good breeding.”
“Can you come over? My mother always asks why you don’t come over anymore. She thinks you don’t like me anymore, for heaven’s sake.” Ebbie pushed out her large lower lip in a mock sulk.
“You know that’s not true, Ebbie! You are absolutely, positively my best friend!”
“Good, so come. Why not this Friday? We can have a sleepover.”
“I’ll ask. I don’t know, but I’ll ask. I’d like that so much.” Irene thought how her parents were always fighting now. She thought about her mother complaining the house was too small for the three of them. And so maybe, maybe, her mother would let her go. “She’ll say yes, I’m sure she will. I’m positively sure.”
Irene and Ebbie went the rest of the way to school together with their arms wrapped around each other, looking forward to that Friday, planning what they would eat and what radio programs they’d listen to.
5
Margaret passed the morning sitting in the living room. She could not rouse herself, although there were a million things to do. Beds to make. Laundry to fold. Dusting. Sweeping. Cooking. She kept saying, over and over, “Now, get up now. I will count to three and then I will get up. One, two, three.” And then, nothing.
She saw her reflection in the mirror above the fireplace. Her eyes were wide and wild, her hair a mess, her knuckles in her mouth. She looked like crazy Mrs. Rochester, ready to set fire to the world, ready to be locked in the tower and replaced by Jane Eyre.
At
