My Mother Got Married (6 page)

Relief spread across my face. The thrill of victory! I could hardly believe it! I’d won. At last she had listened to my side!

I was up the stairs in a flash. Breathlessly I delivered the good news.

“Thomas! My mom wants you. She wants you to bring your Candyland game downstairs and play with her.”

He gave me a blank stare.

“Now! Right now!”

Without wasting another second I hurried to the closet, grabbed the game, and shoved it into his arms. “Go, Thomas! Hurry! She’s waiting!”

Reluctantly Thomas got to his feet.

“Why?” he asked meekly.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Never question adults,” I said solemnly. And leading him by the hand, I ushered Thomas out of my room.

Martin and I began to laugh. We gave each other a high five, a low five, and a regular five.

The game started again. I landed on the B&O Railroad and Waterworks. I bought both of them. Martin got sent to jail. My luck was changing.

I had just landed on Boardwalk when I heard it. A creak on the stairs. Martin heard it too. We looked at each other. Then I closed my eyes as tight as they would go. No. Please, I prayed. Please don’t let it be …

“Hi, guys.”

I slumped to the floor.

Thomas was in the doorway. He was waving.

Standing behind him was my mother. A sheepish grin was pasted on her face. She motioned for me to come into the hall.

I folded my arms. This had better be good.

Casually she shrugged her shoulders. “He didn’t want to play,” she explained simply.

That was it? That was her excuse?

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I growled. “You’re the mother.
Make
him play.”

Mom pulled me farther away from the door. Her expression grew more serious. “Listen, Charlie. You’ve got to understand this. It’s not the same with Thomas as it is with you. I don’t want to make him play if he doesn’t want to. I don’t want to be the bad guy. Not yet, anyway. Not over this.”

She paused a second. “You and I have had years to build our love. We’re sure of each other. Even when I’m a little hard on you, you still know I love you. But Thomas and I are just starting out. It takes time to build up that kind of love. And I just have to handle things a little differently with him right now.”

She smiled weakly and tried to ruffle my hair. I backed away.

“Please try to understand,” she said.

I didn’t have to try to understand. It was simple. Thomas mattered more than I did. What was so hard about that?

I went back into my room. Thomas was stuffing more money in his pocket. He was already back to pretending.

“… And pretend that I’m famous, and then you bring your little children over to see me, and then you say, ‘Carl, could we have some money to take our little children to Disneyland?’ ”

“I’m not calling you Carl,” I snapped.

Then I stooped over and dumped the Monopoly game back into the box.

I motioned for Martin. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Thomas’s face dropped.

“Where? Where’re you guys going?”

No one answered.

“Wait! Who am I gonna play with?”

Martin and I were almost out the door when it hit me. I turned around.

“I know who you can play with, Thomas. There’s a hand living in the bottom of the closet,” I told him. “A hand and part of a wrist under my pile of clothes. Why don’t you go in the closet and let it find you?”

Thomas’s face lost its color. I’m not kidding. His eyes grew as big as saucers.

I didn’t stick around to find out what happened next. I just grabbed Martin and got out of there.

I know it was mean, but I couldn’t help it—that’s how you act when you find out your feelings don’t matter to your own mother.

Anyway, it’s not like I got away with it. Thanks to Thomas, when I got home that afternoon I got the biggest lecture of my life. Thomas had been so upset about the hand, he made my mother call Ben home from work to search the closet. The two of them had to go through it inch by inch with a flashlight.

That night, Thomas made Ben put Mickey Mouse night lights in every electric plug in our room. Even then, he wouldn’t go to bed until I did.

“There’s no hand. There’s no hand,” he kept muttering to himself as the two of us entered the room. “It was just a little joke. Right, Charrulls? There’s no hand in the closet.”

Not at night, Thomas, I thought. At night it sleeps under your bed. I didn’t say it, though.

Thomas made a giant leap for his bed and quickly ducked under the covers.

“You’re mad at me, aren’t you, Charrulls?” he whispered after a few seconds. “You’re not talking to me.”

I didn’t answer. I just stood at the window looking out at the roof.

“Sorry,” he said.

I’m not even sure he knew what he was apologizing for.

But I wasn’t about to feel sorry for him. Why should I? It wasn’t just my day he had ruined. It was my entire life.

“You’re a tattletale, Thomas,” I told him finally. “I don’t want a tattletale for a brother.”

I opened the window and crawled out. “And don’t follow me out here. This is the only place I have left that’s mine.”

Quickly I crawled to my favorite spot by the chimney. The night air was chilly, but it felt good to be out of the house. I breathed in deeply and leaned back far enough to see the stars.

Time, I thought. Time was the magic word, right? At least according to most adults, time is all you ever need to make things better. “Give it some time,” they’ll say, “and everything will fall into place.”

Only this time nothing was falling into place. It had been almost a month and things were just getting worse.

I was getting worse, too. I knew I was. I was meaner and angrier than I’d been in a long time.

Suddenly a small gust of wind came from nowhere and made me shiver. I pulled my knees up close to my body and buried my head in my arms.

Huddling close to the chimney, I tried to remember the last time I had felt peaceful inside, and happy. I’m eleven, and I couldn’t remember.

(six)

O

N THE way to school the next morning I was still upset.

“I can’t believe that little nerd told on me like that,” I growled as Martin and I stood on the corner waiting to cross the street. “Can you? Can you believe he squealed? What a jerk!”

But instead of answering, Martin just folded his arms and looked at me. It was the kind of look an adult gives you when you’re being a brat.

“Stop doing that,” I said, annoyed. “I hate it when you do that. You look like my father.”

Martin didn’t change his expression. “I just feel sort of sorry for the kid, that’s all. You probably scared the little dude out of his skin. I bet he didn’t even mean to get you in trouble. He just didn’t want some hand crawling out of the closet without its body.”

“Oh, great. That’s great, Martin,” I snapped. “Thanks for all the support.”

“Don’t get mad about it. I’m not saying I want him hanging around us all the time or anything. All I’m saying is you can’t really blame a little kid for being scared like that. After my sister Olivia saw
Frankenstein
for the first time, all you had to do was sneak up behind her and she’d wet her pants.”

“Yeah, I know, Martin. You’ve told me that before. You still make fun of her about it, too. That’s how understanding
you
are.”

Martin just shrugged in that cool way of his. “Olivia’s different. She isn’t human. Olivia is a creature that my mother and father created to destroy me.”

We stopped talking about it after that. That’s the good thing about Martin. He tells me I’m wrong and then he quits. He doesn’t keep lecturing the rest of the day like my mother usually does. In this case it didn’t really matter, though. The junk Martin had said stayed in my head anyway.

I thought about how Thomas was only five and how I had been treating him and how I was new to him, too. And about how I’d known all along I wasn’t being very fair to him. After all, it wasn’t his fault that my mother and Ben got married. Even if I’d really hated the kid, which I didn’t, I had to admit that much. Maybe not to Martin, but to myself at least.

I
DECIDED
to try. I’m not kidding. For the next few days I was so patient and understanding with Thomas that I almost got an ulcer from the stress. Like at breakfast, when I saw him digging his dirty little paws into the bottom of the cereal box to get the toy surprise, I hardly even groaned. And later in the week, when he got frustrated over making his bed, I helped him smooth out the lumps. All I did was take his teddy out from under the covers, but he still hugged me for it.

The thing that really got me in trouble, though, was letting him sit in the chair with me while we watched
Wild Kingdom.
It made him think we were buddies.

“Thanks, Charrulls!” he exclaimed when he got down. “Thanks for letting me sit with you. That was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled as I headed to my room.

“Hey! I got an idea!” he squealed, tagging along behind. “Want to play something? Want to play Let’s Pretend?”

Let’s Pretend was Thomas’s favorite game. It wasn’t really a game, though. Thomas would just make up a bunch of dumb stuff to act out and you’d do it. I’d seen Lydia play it with him once or twice when she was baby-sitting.

“Please, Charrulls? Please?” he begged.

I filled my cheeks with air and let it seep out. “Okay, Thomas,” I agreed reluctantly. “I’ll play. But only for a little while.”

It almost killed me to say it, but I did.

His eyes lit up like it was Christmas or something. “You mean it, Charrulls?”

“Don’t push it, okay?” I said. “Let’s just do this and get it over with.”

He thought for a second. “I know! I’ve got a great one!” he exclaimed. “Let’s pretend that I’m a magic guy and my name is Carl and then you come to my house and then I turn you into a horse.”

I gritted my teeth and sat down on my bed. “Okay, fine. I’m a horse. Now what?”

“No, Charrulls! That’s not how you play! You’ve got to
do
it! You’ve got to come to my house!”

Already I felt my eyes start to roll back in my head. “Where’s your house?”

Thomas hid behind the trash can.

“You have to knock,” he explained.

I knocked.

“Hello, boy,” he said in a deep voice. “My name is Carl. What’s yours?”

Before I could answer, he leaned into my ear. “Say your name is Wendell.”

I frowned. “Could we just get on with this, please?”

Thomas nodded. “Okay, okay. Pretend I get mad at you for knocking on my door and then I decide to change you into a horse.”

I looked at him strangely. “Heck of an idea, Carl.”

Thomas frowned and shook his head. “No, Charrulls. You have to beg me not to do it. You have to say, ‘Please, Carl. Please don’t change me into a horse!’ ”

He looked at me and waited.

I took another deep breath and looked around to make sure no one was listening.

“Please, Carl. Please don’t change me into a horse,” I said finally.

Thomas made his voice real deep. “Yes, Wendell. I must.”

Then he made a loud zapping noise.

“Okay, now pretend you’re a horse and your name is Jellybean.”

I covered my face with my hands. This was turning out to be even more humiliating than I had imagined. “I don’t want that name,” I told him.

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Your name is Jellybean and you’re a nice horse and you get down on your knees and ride me around the room.”

He stood there patiently waiting again.

I know it’s hard to believe, but I did it. I’m serious. I actually got down on my hands and knees and let Thomas get on my back. We circled the room two times.

“Whoa, Jellybean. Whoa, boy,” he said at last, pulling back on my hair.

“Okay,” he said as he got off. “Now pretend you get mad and you try to trample me and then I poke you with a stick.”

I probably don’t need to mention that this was something I
really
didn’t want to do.

Once again, Thomas waited.

I was still thinking it over when he poked me under the arm with his finger.

“Come on. Do it.”

A second later he poked me again. This time I knocked his hand away.

“Hey, Jellybean! Quit that!” he ordered.

It was degrading. It really was.

“I don’t think I want to play this anymore, Thomas,” I said. “Thanks a lot, though. It’s been fun.”

Thomas started to panic. “Yes, Charrulls! Yes! You have to!”

I just knelt there, looking at him. “Sorry, Carl. I just can’t,” I said quietly. Then I stood up and left the room.

Lydia was coming in the front door. Teenagers are always coming in from somewhere, but they never tell you where.

Upstairs, Thomas had started screaming, “Hey you! Come back here! Come back!”

As Lydia and I passed on the steps she stopped to listen. “What’s wrong with him?” she wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I muttered, continuing on my way.

She turned and followed me down to the living room. “Well, if nothing’s wrong, then why is he yelling?”

I picked up the remote control and flipped on the TV. “We were playing a game and I quit, that’s all,” I said, trying to be real casual about it.

Lydia started to grin. “Was it Let’s Pretend?” she asked.

Naturally I refused to admit it.

“Don’t tell me. He was making you be a horse. Am I right?” she questioned.

Geez! Had she been spying the whole time or what?

“Jellybean?” she persisted.

“Great!” I said finally, throwing my hands in the air. “That’s just great. You were listening.”

Lydia laughed out loud. “How could I have been listening? I wasn’t even here!”

“I don’t know. But Martin Oates says that girls are the snoopiest, sneakiest busybodies in the world.”

Lydia just kept grinning. “Get serious, Charles. I’ve been that stupid horse a million times myself. Every time I play with Thomas, he makes me be Jellybean.”