Monday's Child (4 page)

Eight

The bell rang at two forty-five, the same as it did every day.

Miss Appleton had not returned to the classroom after Kevin’s accident so Mrs. Bastilla dismissed them. Instead of the usual rush for the door, her classmates made an orderly exit.

Jill pretended to be looking for something in her desk, waiting until they’d all gone and the halls were empty again before getting up. She gathered her books and went to her cubbyhole to get her lunchbox.

The apple she hadn’t eaten at noon was rolling around in the lunchbox and rather than take it home to be recycled for tomorrow’s lunch, she stopped at the wastebasket to throw it out. It thudded dully as it hit the bottom. She wrinkled her nose at the too-ripe smell.

The upper grades didn’t let out until a quarter after three, and she looked in as she walked slowly past those rooms. The sixth grade class appeared to be taking a test, heads bent and writing furiously.

Jill wondered what it would take to break their concentration. Would they stay in their seats if the room became unbearably hot . . . if the paint began to boil off the walls?

“You’ll miss your bus.”

She stopped and turned, hugging her books to her.

Mr. Downs had come out of the nurse’s office and was striding down the hall towards her. Even at a distance she could see the spots of blood on his shirt, dried now to a rusty brown.

“Are you okay, Jill?”

She nodded, fingering the torn cover of her math workbook. “How is Kevin?”

Mr. Downs smiled and she knew he was pleased that she’d asked. “He’ll be fine. The doctors will fix his arm as good as new.”

She hadn’t thought about it being fixed. She lowered her head and walked on.

“They’ll put a cast on it and you kids can sign your names. Then everybody will fuss over him and he won’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to.”

“Oh.”

Mr. Downs put his hand on her shoulder. “Of course, it must hurt pretty bad now.”

She hoped so.

“But I don’t want you to worry about that.” He cupped her chin in his hand and tilted her face so he could look in her eyes. “Just . . . be a good girl.”

The bus driver hadn’t waited.

It made no difference; she liked walking home. The house would be empty—her mother wasn’t off work till four—but she had a key to let herself in.

Sometimes there would be cookies on a plate, covered with plastic wrap. Or chocolate pudding. Or frosty cold milk in a thermos.

Probably not today, though. Her mother hadn’t been to the store since the weekend.

She kicked at the gravel as she crossed the school parking lot. It clattered against the hubcaps of the teachers’ cars.

Jill glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching, and noticed Miss Appleton talking with Mr. Barry near the entrance to the multi-purpose room. The principal stood shaking his head as her teacher gestured.

They were too far away for their voices to carry, but she could tell that Miss Appleton was upset.

Jill stepped between two of the cars, and circled slowly to the rear. From there she could see them but they wouldn’t be able to see her. Through several angles of glass they seemed even further away.

She bent down and leaned forward, resting one hand on the trunk to keep her balance.

Mr. Barry had thrust his hands in his pockets and was rocking back and forth on his heels. When her father did that, it meant he was mad.

Miss Appleton reached and touched the sleeve of his jacket. When he pulled his arm away and took a step back, she immediately closed the distance between them.

At that, he threw up his hands, as if in exasperation, then hurried off. When he got to the front of the building, he ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and disappeared inside.

Miss Appleton was no match for his long legs, but she followed him anyway.

What, she wondered, had made Mr. Barry mad?

She thought she knew. Something would have to be done about Miss Appleton.

But not today.

Today she was tired.

The house was stuffy from being closed up, and Jill left the front door open after making sure that the screen door was locked. She picked up the mail that had been dropped through the slot and carried it with her into the kitchen.

After putting the mail on the table, she went to the refrigerator to look for a snack.

All she could find was a can of Hershey’s Fudge Topping. She took off the yellow plastic lid and used her finger to get a taste.

The rich, slightly bitter flavor was just what she needed to quell her hunger.

She went to get a spoon.

Nine

Georgia fixed spaghetti for dinner, going to the trouble of shaping individual meatballs rather than simply frying the hamburger and dumping it in the sauce, but Jill ate only a few bites before asking to be excused.

“Aren’t you feeling well?” Spaghetti was usually a favorite.

“I’m not hungry.”

Georgia frowned, put down her fork and wiped her hands on her napkin. “Come here, honey.”

Jill pushed her chair away from the table and came around to stand by her side.

“You look a little flushed,” Georgia said. She placed the palm of her hand on her daughter’s forehead, but although her color was high, the child’s skin was cool and dry to the touch. “Well, you don’t seem to have a fever.”

“I’m okay.”

“Hmm.” Georgia smoothed the hair back from Jill’s face, tucking the silken strands behind her ears. “Then you’re excused.”

Jill went to take her plate to the sink.

“But put on your slippers,” Georgia said, belatedly noticing that the girl was barefoot. “I don’t want you catching cold.”

She finished her own dinner and started to clean up, scraping the remains off Jill’s plate into the disposal. She flipped the switch and listened to it grind, standing to one side so that if the motor decided to seize up, she wouldn’t get the back flow in her face.

It took the disposal forever and a day to devour the spaghetti, but she couldn’t throw it in the garbage.

In the past few weeks, the neighborhood had been plagued with dogs. No one knew where they’d come from, but there were packs of them, lean hungry-looking animals, and they got into the trash cans at night, scrounging for whatever they could find.

She didn’t want the smell of food attracting them into the yard, especially now that they had Hoppity.

All of which reminded her that the town council had agreed to a meeting early next week to discuss what they could do about the dogs and she wanted to call a few of her neighbors to organize a committee.

Of course, it was the dinner hour, not the best time to be knocking on doors.

Dinner hour. How long had it been since they’d had an old-fashioned family dinner? How long since Dave had even had dinner at home?

Maybe she and Jill should go down to the restaurant some night and surprise him.

For some reason, the prospect made her uncomfortable.

She ran hot water, intending to let the dishes soak. As she waited for the sink to fill, she glanced out the kitchen window at the house across the street and was surprised to see the porch light on.

The doctor was in town, then.

Should she invite him to the meeting? Maybe he wouldn’t want to be bothered; although he’d bought the house some five years ago, he was seldom there.

From what others had told her, he lived and worked in Los Angeles. Every few months he showed up in Winslow and spent a day or two at the house.

Georgia had a nodding acquaintance with him, but they’d never spoken. He kept to himself, mostly, but he always had a smile for Jill.

He had a nice smile.

It wouldn’t do any harm to ask, she decided. As a doctor, he was probably more interested than most in matters of public health and safety.

But when she knocked on his door there was no answer. On the chance that he was upstairs or on the phone, she knocked again and waited, pulling her sweater around her to ward off the evening breeze.

She leaned forward, listening for any signs of movement inside, but heard nothing. There were glass panes on either side of the door, and she had to resist the urge to peek into the house.

“That you, Georgia?”

Georgia turned. “Oh hello, Mr. Rafferty.” Old Rafferty—no one seemed to know his given name—was the neighborhood curmudgeon. Even though he wore half-inch thick glasses, carried a cane, and claimed to be legally blind, there wasn’t much that got by him.

“He’s not home,” Rafferty said.

“But he is in town?”

“Yup.”

Feeling awkward at having been caught with her ear to the door—a minute later and her face might have been pressed to the window—she moved to join the old man on the street. Even in the open air, he smelled of mothballs and of the anise cookies that were his passion.

“How are you?” she asked.

He waved the question off. “Same, the same. Nothing wrong, is there?”

“What?”

“You got somebody sick at home? Needing a doctor?”

“No, no.” She looked back at the house. “I thought I’d ask him if he’d like to be on the neighborhood committee we’re forming. About the dogs.”

“Dogs.” Rafferty swept the air with his cane. “They ought to shoot ’em.”

She inclined her head slightly but said nothing; he could interpret that however he wanted.

“Or they could try sprinkling arsenic in a garbage can or two.”

Georgia knew he was trying to get a rise out of her and that if she took the bait, he’d keep her here arguing half the night, but she couldn’t let that pass. “I hope you’re not serious—”

“But whatever they do,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “what makes you think a big city doctor would give a fig about our little problems?”

“He lives here, too.”

“That depends on your point of view.”

“I suppose it does. I just thought . . . well, never mind. I’d better get back to the house. Jill will be wondering where I am.” She smiled to be polite and turned to go. “Goodnight, Mr. Rafferty.”

“Mind you, I think you’re wasting your time,” Rafferty called after her. “But you probably can reach him at the hospital if you want to try . . .”

Jill was asleep when Georgia went in to check on her, curled up on top of the bed in her flannel pajamas and pink slippers.

“So much for having someone keep me company tonight,” she said under her breath. She covered Jill with an afghan and reached to turn out the lamp, then remembered.

Where were the buttons?

They weren’t on the bedside table where she’d told Jill to leave them. Carefully, quietly, she opened the drawer to look for them, but the only items she saw were hair ribbons, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands, and several broken crayons.

At that moment, Jill sighed in her sleep. Her eyelashes fluttered—was she dreaming?—and her mouth formed a perfect pout.

Georgia smiled.

Not wanting to wake her, Georgia closed the drawer and turned off the light.

“Sweet dreams,” she whispered.

For awhile she busied herself around the house, picking up and putting things away, but she lost interest when she realized that by doing so, she was revealing how much dust had built up since her last cleaning.

Intending to settle in for a night of watching TV, she went first to the kitchen to get a soft drink and rediscovered the mail.

Bills.

There were always bills.

The MasterCard bill was higher than she’d expected, but Dave had a nasty habit of losing the charge slips, or leaving them in a shirt pocket to disintegrate in the wash.

“The wash! Damn.”

The clothes were still out on the line; she’d forgotten entirely. Again.

It was fully dark out and Georgia got the flashlight from the junk drawer before heading out the back door. It slammed behind her, startling something which rustled in the bushes.

She didn’t turn the light on the bushes, because no matter what was there, she’d rather not know. Any creature which preferred a nocturnal lifestyle was not one she cared to see.

Georgia crossed the yard.

She’d always loved the smell of clothes hung out to dry in the fresh air, and she breathed in the clean scent as she gathered them in her arms. They were a little damp in the corners, but spring was still something of an illusion; the afternoons were chilly despite the clear blue skies they’d been having.

She shoved a handful of wooden clothespins into her jeans pocket, and turned to go into the house, hugging the clothes to her and pointing the flashlight so she could see where she was stepping. Some of the flat oval stones that Dave had used to create a walkway had worked loose from all the rain they’d had this past winter, but he was too busy nowadays to be fixing things around the house.

The restaurant was taking more of his time than either of them had anticipated in the beginning, but, as he never failed to point out, it had been her idea that they start a business of their own.

“I’m doing this for you and Jill,” he’d say. “You know what they say tuitions will be running by the time Jill is ready for college.”

Her foot skidded and slipped off a stepping stone, and into the surrounding mud.

“Great.” She pulled her foot loose and pointed the light at her shoe; an inch of mud caked the heel. At least these weren’t her new Reeboks.

She stamped her shoe but the mud clung. Of course, it
would
cling, right up until the moment she stepped into the house. Then she could track it through the kitchen and spend the rest of the evening mopping up.

“Wonderful,” she said.

As if in response to her voice, something stirred behind her and she whirled.

Everything was still.

A few feet away, she could see the dark shape of the rabbit hutch by the elm tree, and she wondered if she should ask Dave to move it closer to the house, where Hoppity would be safer. It’d take him all of five minutes . . .

Five minutes or five hours, he’d be annoyed, and he wouldn’t bother to hide how he felt. Why, he’d want to know, hadn’t she thought about such things when the man from the pet shop had delivered it?

Why indeed?

Jill hadn’t been as excited about her Easter present as Georgia imagined she would be.

Dave was sure to remind her that they could ill afford the money she’d spent.

And the rabbit, named Hoppity not by acclamation but by default—Jill steadfastly refusing to voice a preference—had been pretty much ignored, the poor thing.

Georgia sighed and frowned, dragging the heel of her shoe through the thick grass.

The sleeve of one of Dave’s shirts brushing the ground and she lifted it clear, tucking it back into the bundle. As she did so, the flashlight beam showed Hoppity huddled in the corner of his hutch. Were rabbits scared of the dark, too?

“I know how you feel,” she said to him. And muddy shoes or not, she hurried back inside.