be feebleminded. It was typical of Ezra that he loved Josiah with all his heart, and would even have had him to the house if their mother weren’t scared of him. Cody stopped by when Ezra’s class was at lunch, and he slipped behind the cloakroom partition and stuck the whistle in the pocket of Josiah’s enormous black peacoat. After that there was a stretch of Indian summer and Josiah evidently left his jacket where it hung, so the whistle stayed lost for days. Ezra was very upset about it. “Have you seen my whistle?” he asked everybody. For once, Cody didn’t have to listen to “Greensleeves” and “The Ash Grove,” played on that breathy little pipe, whose range was so limited that for high notes, Ezra had to blow extra hard and split people’s eardrums. “You took it,” Ezra told Cody. “Didn’t you? I know you did.”
“What would I want with a stupid toy whistle?” Cody asked.
He was hoping that when it turned up in Josiah Payson’s pocket, Ezra would blame Josiah. But it didn’t happen that way. Whatever passed between them was settled without any fuss, and the two of them continued to be friends. Once again, a cracked, foggy “Ash Grove” burbled in every corner of the house.
Their mother went on one of her rampages. “Pearl has hit the warpath,” Cody told his brother and sister. He always called her Pearl at such times. “Better look out,” he said. “She’s dumped all Jenny’s bureau drawers.”
“Oh-oh,” Ezra said.
“She’s slamming things around and talking to herself.”
“
Cody had met the other two on the porch; they’d stayed late at school. He silently opened the door for them, and they crept up the stairs. Each took a great, lunging stride over the step that creaked — although surely their mother would not have heard them. She was making too much noise in the kitchen. Throwing pots through windowpanes, was what it sounded like.
They tiptoed across the hall to Jenny’s room. “What a mess!” Ezra breathed. Heaps of clothing covered the floor. Empty drawers had been hurled everywhere. The wardrobe stood open, its hangers stripped, and Jenny’s puff-sleeved dresses lay in a heap. Jenny stared from the doorway. “Jen?” Cody asked her. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Jenny said in a quavery voice.
“Think! Some little thing, something you’ve forgotten about …”
“Nothing. I promise.”
“Well, help me get these drawers back in,” he said to Ezra.
It was a two-man job. The drawers were oak, cumbersome and inclined to stick. Cody and Ezra grunted as they fitted them into the bureau. Jenny traveled around the room collecting her clothes. Tears had filled her eyes, and she kept dabbing at her nose with one or another rolled pair of socks. “Stop that,” Cody told her. “She’ll do it all again, if she finds snot on your socks.”
He and Ezra gathered slips and hair ribbons, shook out blouses, tried to get the dresses back on their hangers the way they’d been before. Some were hopelessly wrinkled, and those they smoothed as best they could and hid at the rear of the wardrobe. Meanwhile Jenny knelt on the floor, sniffling and folding undershirts.
“I wish we could just go off,” Ezra said, “and not come back till it’s over.”
“It won’t be over till she’s had her scene,” Cody told him. “You know that. There’s no way we can get around it.”
“I wish Daddy were here.”
“Well, he’s not, so shut up.”
Ezra straightened a sash.
After they’d put everything in order, the three of them sat in a row on Jenny’s bed. The sounds from the kitchen were different now — cutlery rattling, glassware clinking. Their mother must be setting the table. Pretty soon she’d serve supper. Cody had such a loaded feeling in his throat, he never wanted to eat again. No doubt the others felt the same; Ezra kept swallowing. Jenny said, “Let’s run away from home.”
“We don’t have anyplace to run to,” Cody said.
Their mother came to the foot of the stairs and called them. Her voice was thin, like the sound of a gnat. “Children.”
They filed down, dragging their feet. They stopped at the first-floor bathroom and meticulously scrubbed their hands, taking extra pains with the backs. Each one waited for the others. Then they went into the kitchen. Their mother was slicing a brick of Spam. She didn’t look at them, but she started speaking the instant they were seated. “It’s not enough that I should have to work till five p.m., no; then I come home and find nothing seen to, no chores done, you children off till all hours with disreputable characters in the alleys or wasting your time with school chorus, club meetings; table not set, breakfast dishes not washed, supper not cooked, floors not swept, mail in a heap on the mat … and not a sign of any of you. Oh, I know what’s going on! I know what you three are up to! Neighborhood savages, that’s what you are, mingling with each and all. How am I supposed to deal with this? How am I expected to cope? Useless daughter, great unruly bruising boys … I know what people are saying. You think my customers aren’t glad to tell me? Coming in simpering, Well, Mrs. Tull, that oldest boy of yours is certainly growing up. I saw him with a pack of Camels in the street in front of the Barlow girl’s house.’ And I have to smile and take it. Have to stand there on exhibit while they’re all thinking, ‘Poor Mrs. Tull, I don’t know how she can hold her head up. It’s clear she doesn’t have the least ability to handle those children; look at how they’re disgracing her.’ Sticking potatoes on people’s exhaust pipes and letting the air out of tires and shooting at streetlights with BB guns and stealing hubcaps and making off with traffic signs and moving Mrs. Correlli’s madonna to Sonny Boy Brown’s kitchen stoop and hanging around the hydrants with girls no better than tramps, girls in tight sweaters and ankle chains, oh, I hear about it everywhere …”
“But not me, Mama,” Jenny said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t do those things.”
Well, of course she didn’t (only Cody did), but she shouldn’t have pointed that out. Now she’d drawn attention to herself. Pearl turned, gathered force, and plunged. “You! I know about you. I couldn’t believe my ears. What should I be doing but coming down the church steps Sunday when I see you with that Melanie Miller from your Bible class. ‘Oh, Melanie …’ ” She made her voice shrill and prissy, nothing like Jenny’s, really. “ ‘Melanie, I just love your dress. I wish I had a dress like that.’ Understand,” she said, turning to the boys, “this was a cheap little number from Sears. The plaid wasn’t matched; there was a ruffle at the hem like a … square dance outfit and a bunch of artificial flowers pinned to the waist. A totally inappropriate dress for a nine-year-old, or for anyone. But ‘Oh, I wish I had that,’ your sister says, so everyone thinks, ‘Poor Mrs. Tull, she can’t even afford a Sears and Roebuck dress with artificial flowers; I don’t know how she manages, slaving away at that grocery all day and struggling over her budget at night, cutting here and cutting there, wondering will she scrape by, hoping nobody runs up a doctor bill, praying her children’s feet will stop growing …’
“And Melanie’s mother, well, it’s just like opening the door to such a person. First thing you know she’ll be walking in here big as life: ‘Mrs. Tull, I happen to have the catalogue we ordered Melanie’s dress from, if you would care for one for Jenny.’ As if I’d want to dress my daughter like an orphan! As if I’d like for her to duplicate some other child! ‘No, thank you, Mrs. Miller,’ I’ll say. ‘I may not be able to afford so very much but at least when I do buy, I buy with finished seams. No, Mrs. Miller, you keep your so-called wish book, your quarter-inch hem allowances, smashed felt flowers …’ What’s wrong with us, I’d like to know? Aren’t we good enough for my own blood daughter? Doesn’t she feel I’m doing my best, my level best, to provide? Does she have to pick up riffraff? Does she have to bring home scum? We’re a family! We used to be so close! What happened to us? Why would she act so disloyal?”
She sat down serenely, as if finished with the subject forever, and reached for a bowl of peas. Jenny’s face was streaming with tears, but she wasn’t making a sound and Pearl seemed unaware of her. Cody cleared his throat.
“But that was Sunday,” he said.
Pearl’s serving spoon paused, midway between the bowl and her plate. She looked politely interested. “Yes?” she said.
“This is Wednesday.”
“Yes.”
“It’s Wednesday, dammit; it’s three days later. So why bring up something from Sunday?”
Pearl threw the spoon in his face. “You upstart,” she said. She rose and slapped him across the cheek. “You
