My Mother Got Married (7 page)

Hearing this made me feel a little better. I pointed to my head. “Yeah, well, guess what? I think the kid’s got a screw loose somewhere.”

Suddenly Lydia’s whole mood seemed to change. “He does not. He’s just a little boy, that’s all.”

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

I couldn’t tell if she was really mad or what. Sometimes Lydia was a real puzzle. Half the time she acted like Thomas was a pest, and the other half, she was real protective of him, like a mother would be. Once she held a Kleenex while he blew his nose. You’ve got to practically worship somebody to do that.

For a while we just sat there quietly staring at the TV. But I knew that neither one of us was paying any attention to it. Lydia still had something else to say. I could feel it building up in the silence.

“Thomas hasn’t had it that easy, you know,” she blurted out all at once. “You shouldn’t be so hard on him. His life has been hard enough.”

I squirmed in my chair. It was embarrassing, being yelled at like that.

“He never even knew our mother,” she went on. “Just think what that must be like for a minute.”

She paused, and her voice softened. “She was really cute, my mom was. She didn’t look like a grown-up woman, exactly. More like a kid. That’s where Thomas and I got our freckles. Daddy says she had one of those faces that never get old.”

She stopped again, as if she were remembering. “Thomas was only six weeks old when she, well, when she got sick. He looks at her pictures sometimes. He knows that it’s Mom. We’ve told him enough. But still, you can tell by his eyes that he’s looking at a stranger.”

I glanced over at her face. Her eyes were filling up with tears.

She wiped them and stared out into space.

“It’s really hard, you know?” she added almost in a whisper. “When I fill out forms at school, I write ‘deceased’ where Mom is supposed to go.”

Tears started to run down her cheeks. This time she stood up and hurried out of the room.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

“No … it’s okay,” I called after her. “Really.”

I wished I could have told her that I understood. I didn’t, though. How could I? How could anyone understand something as sad as that?

(seven)

T

HE NEXT day things seemed to be back to normal. Lydia’s alarm went off at six
A.M.
Then, just like every other school morning, I heard her come padding down the hall in her fuzzy bunny slippers. The ones with the ears. Then the bathroom door closed and the sound of the lock echoed in the hallway.

That was that. Lydia wouldn’t come out again until her ride to school started honking the horn. Even if Thomas and I had to go really bad, she wouldn’t unlock the stupid door. The first week she moved in I made a wet spot on my Superman, Man of Steel pajamas. I’ll never really forgive Lydia for that.

The trouble was, even when I did get into the bathroom, it wasn’t the same as it used to be. Makeup and hair junk and perfume were crammed everywhere. Sometimes there was so much crap I couldn’t even find my toothbrush. Once when I picked it up, it had already been used. I still get queasy when I think about it.

Besides the bathroom mess, rubber bands with little hair balls in them could be found all over the house. Like suddenly, she would be walking through the house and get this uncontrollable urge to rip out her ponytail, hair and all. It was disgusting and scary at the same time.

There was one more thing, too. Lydia smelled. I’m not kidding. She would walk by, and suddenly this giant perfume cloud would fill the air and make you cough. It hung in the air for about twenty minutes. To breathe, you had to put a hanky over your nose.

I’m not exaggerating. One night at dinner Ben took a whiff of her and pretended to clear out his sinuses. Lydia got tears in her eyes and left the table.

She ran upstairs to take a bubble bath. She took at least two baths or showers a day. That’s twice as many as I took the entire time I was at camp.

“Great!” she shrieked from the top of the stairs. “Thomas used all my bubble bath again! There was almost half a bottle left last night and now it’s gone!”

Ben glanced at Thomas and frowned.

Thomas shrugged and shoved in another forkful of mashed potatoes.

“Did not,” he mumbled.

Lydia stormed back down to the kitchen and held the empty bottle upside down.

“Look at this! It’s totally gone! He must have had bubbles up to the ceiling!”

Thomas kept right on eating.

“Did not,” he repeated quietly. A kernel of corn fell out of his mouth onto the place mat.

“Yes, you did! You did too!”

This time Thomas looked up and smiled. “Not, not, not,” he said.

“Too! too! too! too! too! too! too!” shrieked Lydia.

I excused myself from the table. Fights at dinner cause indigestion. And besides, I had enough problems of my own without getting involved in this one.

But just in case anyone wants my opinion, if Lydia had wanted to keep her precious bubble bath to herself, she shouldn’t have put it right out on the tub in plain sight. It’s not like it had her name on it or anything. Who knew?

And anyway, if the stupid bubbles had lasted longer, I wouldn’t have needed so much.

U
NFORTUNATELY
, Lydia hogged more than just the bathroom. She was also a telephone hog. I’m not sure which was worse. When you think about it, the telephone and the toilet are a lot alike. You might not use them that often, but when you need them, you
need
them.

One night, because of Lydia’s blabbing, I had to walk home from Martin’s house in the pouring rain. I tried for an hour and a half to call my mother to come get me. That’s ninety straight minutes! And all I could get was a busy signal!

Getting a busy signal for an hour and a half makes a person crazy. I’m not kidding. I read about a guy who got so mad at a busy signal that he shot his telephone right in the receiver. He said it was self-defense. I can understand that now.

Anyway, it finally got to be dinnertime and I was forced to leave. Mrs. Oates invited me to stay, but she was having vegetable casserole. I had it once. It made me spit up.

By the time I walked the two blocks to my house that night, I was soaked and shivering. Also, my underwear was blue from my wet jeans.

Lydia was off the phone and back in the bathroom. Ben made her get out so I could take a hot bath. When she walked past, I gave her a dirty look.

“Thanks for staying on the phone all night,” I growled.

Lydia looked at me and gasped.

“Oh wow! That reminds me. I haven’t called Amanda back yet!”

I wore the underwear in the tub, but the blue never came out.

T
HE NEXT
week I came down with the flu. I got it from the rain. My mother said you can’t catch the flu from the rain but I did.

Ben and Lydia caught it first. I don’t know where they got theirs, but they both got sick on Sunday. I didn’t get sick until Wednesday. By then, all of my mother’s sympathy had already been used up.

“You don’t have a temperature,” she informed me Wednesday morning when I said I didn’t feel good.

“I don’t care. I’m still sick,” I told her.

She checked the thermometer again. “Why don’t you go to school and give it a chance? See how you feel at lunchtime,” she suggested.

I shook my head. “I can’t. I’ll be dead by lunchtime.”

This time she frowned. “I want you to give it a try, Charlie. I’ve got to go into the office today and Ben’s got his hands full with Lydia. Two sickies is just about all this family can handle.”

“Oh, excuse me,” I snapped. “Next time I’ll wait my turn so I won’t inconvenience anyone.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mom continued. “You know how you are. Sometimes after you get moving around a little bit, you start feeling better. If you don’t, you can call me at work. You know the number of the real estate office, right? If you call, I’ll come get you. I promise.”

There was no sense arguing. Her mind was made up. I was going to school and that was that.

It turned out just like I knew it would. By eleven o’clock my head was down on my desk. By eleven fifteen, I was scouting the room for emergency places to puke.

Suddenly I shot my hand into the air. My stomach told me to.

“I need to go to the nurse’s office!” I blurted out from the back of the room.

My teacher looked up from her desk.

“Now!” I added urgently.

Mrs. Berkie got the message. She sprang up from her seat, dashed down my aisle, and slapped a hall pass into my hand.

“Run like the wind,” she told me.

Out in the hall I could smell the food from the cafeteria. Beef and bean burritos. I put my hand over my mouth and started booking down the hall.

By the time I hit Nurse Cook’s office I was almost out of breath. I didn’t even wait for her to ask what was wrong. I just flopped down on her cot and rolled up into a little ball.

She stared at me a moment, but I can’t really say she looked surprised. I have a feeling that on beef and bean burrito day, scenes like this are pretty common.

She covered me with a blanket and put her hand on my forehead. “Not feeling too good, huh?” she asked.

“Your name?”

I moaned and answered at the same time.

“Stay here. I need to go get your emergency card,” she said. “Be back in a minute.”

A minute? Oh no! I couldn’t last a minute! Deep breaths, I ordered. Lots of deep breaths and the sick feeling will go away. In and out … in and out … in and … up. It came up on breath number three. I barely had time to grab the trash can.

The nurse came back before I was finished. She stopped in the doorway and made a face. Personally, I think that this was very unprofessional.

“Are you okay?” she asked at last.

Oh, yes. I’m fine, I thought. I love barfing into school trash cans. It’s a hobby of mine.

But instead of saying anything, I just nodded.

Nurse Cook gave me a wet paper towel and pointed me toward the sink. Then she held her breath and carried the can out of the room.

A few minutes later she phoned my mother at work.

“Sorry, hon, but your mother isn’t in the office right now,” she reported. “They say she’s out looking at property.”

She tried my father next. He wasn’t in his office either.

I sighed deeply. “Try my house,” I suggested weakly.

She stared curiously at my emergency card again. “But if both your parents work, who would be at home?”

I took a deep breath. I had no choice. I was finally going to be forced to say the word.

“My stepfather,” I replied, feeling sicker than ever.

Nurse Cook dialed the number. “Busy,” she reported. “I’ll try again in a few minutes.”

She did, too. She tried calling my house for more than an hour. But every single time her message was the same. “Sorry, hon,” she’d say. “Your phone is still—”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me. Busy,” I would mutter weakly.

By one o’clock my head was splitting and I had the chills. I tried to stay warm, but every kid who wandered into the office lifted up the blanket to see who I was.

At one thirty, Nurse Cook drove me home. I think she was afraid I was going to die on her cot. When you’re a nurse, you have to worry about stuff like that. A death doesn’t look that good on your record.

I was never so glad to see my house in my life. All I wanted was to go upstairs, crawl under my covers, and shiver in private. I dropped my books on the first step and started up to my room.

“That you, Charles?” called Ben, sounding raspy. “School out early?”

Slowly I turned around. Then, holding my head so it wouldn’t explode, I walked gently into the living room.

Ben was stretched out on the couch watching TV. He was covered by a giant quilt. Lydia was curled in a big pink blanket next to the phone. The receiver was slightly off the hook.

I stood there and stared in disbelief. She had probably been talking to one of her sick friends and hadn’t hung it up all the way. I couldn’t believe it. All this time and no one had even noticed. Hadn’t they heard the loud beeping the phone makes when it’s off the hook? How could anyone sleep through a racket like that?

I should have started yelling. After what I’d been through, I should have yelled my brains out. But I just couldn’t. If I yelled, my head would have split open.

I started out of the room. Ben looked sort of green. “Wait. So, how was your day?”

This time I couldn’t resist. “Great. It was just great, Ben. I ralphed in the nurse’s trash can.”

Then I turned toward Lydia. “Oh yeah,” I added. “Nurse Cook tried calling, but …”

I pointed at the phone.

Right away, they both saw the problem. Lydia got this sheepish look on her face. “Whoops. Sorry,” she said, replacing the receiver. “I didn’t hear it beep or anything. I must have been in the bathroom.”

Ben frowned at his daughter. “Lydia,” he said sternly. But that was it. I’m serious. That’s all the punishment she got.

After that I went right to my room and got into bed. Then I burrowed my head in my pillow and tried not to die until my mother came home.

She walked through the front door at four o’clock. Ben must have told her what happened. At four thirty she brought hot tea and chicken noodle soup up to my room on a tray.

“I’m working on the Jell-O,” she told me. Then she sat down on the edge of my bed—carefully, so she wouldn’t spill the soup—and gently rubbed the side of my cheek with her hand.

She put her forehead next to mine and smiled sympathetically. That’s one good thing about my mother. Even when I’m contagious, she’s never afraid to get close to me.

“Sorry about what happened today,” she said softly. “You okay?”

“No. You promised you’d be there and you weren’t.”

“I know, Charlie. I’m sorry. I was called out of the office unexpectedly and—”

“I knew this would happen. I told you I was sick but you wouldn’t believe me. You didn’t even care.”

My mother looked as guilty as anything. “I cared,” she said, rubbing my cheek again. “I know you had a bad day, honey, but—”