Читать книгу Tiger Lilly - Sharon Vander Meer - Страница 7

Caleb was sure of two things: he loved his mother and he hated Mrs. Irish. He could not imagine the cow that owned this house was in any way related to his Grandmother Hadley, a mythical figure of gargantuan personality and presence. He had seen pictures of her. She was sharp looking and held herself with dignity. His mother talked about her like she was an angel capable of walking on water, climbing mountains and baking a prize cake, all at the same time.

Caleb was no dummy. There was a lot about Grandmother Hadley he didn’t know, like who Grandfather Hadley might have been. Mom never spoke of him, as though he never existed. But of course he did, otherwise there would be no Annie. He knew that much. It took a man and a woman to make a baby. That was about the depth and breadth of his knowledge but it was enough to know that somewhere out there was—or had been—a man by the name of Hadley. Unless of course, like his mother, Grandmother Hadley had made up her last name, created it to avoid explaining the unexplainable.

At one of the libraries in the many schools he’d attended he looked on the Internet for the name Hadley and got a gazillion hits. He didn’t know how to narrow it down from there. Then he looked under Milly Hadley and found nothing with that combination. There were lots of Milleys, Millies, and lots of Hadleys but no Milly Hadley. All that stuff about finding anything you wanted on the Internet was a bunch of bull. Maybe you could, but first you had to know where to look and what to ask for.

Maybe his grandmother had been like Mom, looking for the right guy. That’s what his mother used to say when she showed up with a new man, “I’m looking for the right guy.” Showing up with a new man hadn’t happened in a long time, not since before Alex was born. Caleb was keeping his fingers crossed that it stayed that way. The only one of his mother’s friends he’d liked at all was a guy she had been seeing before Marie was born.

He put all the tools away and gave the garage a final look. He didn’t want the old bat finding something to jump on him about. It looked pretty good if he did say so. He’d cleaned up the dog crap, put all the undamaged items back in boxes, and separated the chewed up items into open boxes thinking it was up to somebody else to decide what to throw away, and returned order to the room. The old lady was a nut for neatness, no doubt about that.

“What’cha doin’?” Marie clutched Polly Pig, a scruffy, chubby, pink stuffed animal she’d been given by the social worker when they’d been taken away from their mom because a nosey neighbor reported her for leaving him and Marie alone all the time. They’d spent a week in foster care scared out of their minds they would never see their mother again. Polly was an ever-present reminder that the world was a crazy and often scary place.

“Don’t ask dumb questions. You can see what I’m doing.”

“Mama says don’t call people dumb.”

Caleb’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t say you were dumb, I said the question was dumb.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it’s not the same thing!”

“Mama says don’t yell.”

“I’m not yelling.”

“Liar, liar pants on fire.”

Caleb bit back a retort. Marie had a way about her that would rub velvet raw. He knew when a battle wasn’t worth fighting.

“What do you want?”

“Mama says are you done in here.”

“Yeah.”

“Can I play with them?”

It took a couple of seconds for him to catch up with his sister’s leapfrog thinking, until he saw her eyeing the Barbie dolls.

“Forget it.”

“Please, please, please, please, PLEASE?”

“Caleb?” Annie’s voice came in through the open door that led to the kitchen. The boy’s heart turned over in his chest. He couldn’t identify the feelings that squeezed his belly and made him feel sickish, but when she sounded this way—like a balloon was in her throat and she was trying to talk around it—his entire body seized up.

“Yes, ma’am?”

He loved her so much it hurt and the sadness that showed on her face made him want to cry. She looked around quite as if she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. A sudden smile transformed her. “Caleb! What a wonderful, wonderful job you’ve done!”

He blushed. His mother’s praise meant more to him than anything.

“How much were you able to save?”

He shuffled over to the boxes that held bits and pieces of Transformer figures and doll parts.

“Those two have Barbie dolls still in the boxes or that aren’t broken; that one has the Transformers and cars in it,” he said, pointing to closed cardboard boxes. “These,” he said picking up a piece of plastic, “are what’s left of the rest.”

His mother stood beside him looking down into the jumble of pieces. “I guess we’ll have to replace them or pay for the damage,” she said on a sigh.

Caleb said nothing as her face paled. Was she worried about having to tell the old bat how much damage Krank had done? She was probably more worried about getting money to pay for the destroyed items, money they didn’t have. At least they’d gotten Krank outside before he could tear up the house.

His mother closed her eyes and swallowed. Marie wrapped an arm around her leg and clutched Polly Pig in a death grip. “Mama?”

“Marie, leave Mom alone!”

Annie shook her head slightly and pulled in a steadying breath, then dropped down to Marie’s level. “Yes, baby girl?”

Caleb shook his head and sneered. He ignored the whispered conversation between his mother and sister, pretty sure he knew what it was about. Marie wanted to play with the dolls. He didn’t care, she could have them all, but they were somebody else’s like everything else in their lives, except for Krank and the car. Krank was theirs, the car he wasn’t sure about. Cramped up and too small for them his mother said she had bought the car from one of the men she had gone out with, but he wasn’t sure she’d ever paid for it.

His mother stood up. “Everything is back in order, thanks to you. Good job, son. Let’s get cracking so we can get you guys registered in school. It’s early enough in the year you won’t have missed much.”

“School! Mom, you said we wouldn’t be here long!” Caleb wailed.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re here two weeks or two months, you have to get registered; you know that.”

Yeah, he knew that. If you were a couple of kids who should be in school and you weren’t somebody would come nosing around asking questions. His mother didn’t want that.

Marie lit up like a candle at the news. No matter what happened when they were on the road, she thought it was fun. Caleb didn’t think it was fun to start school, be there for little while, and then move on. In fact he hated it. Teachers thought he was dumb because he always had to catch up to what others were doing. He had to do science projects in a day that everyone else had a month to do.

Teachers didn’t much care. They acted like he wasn’t going to be around for long so why bother helping him out? Truth was they were right; he never was around long. He wasn’t worth anybody’s trouble.

He followed his mother and sister out of the garage, the elation over his mother’s praise long gone.

The kitchen sparkled. Mrs. Irish couldn’t have done a better job. The room he shared with Alex was tidied up and their clothes had been neatly folded back into the suitcase, except for the dirty ones. Those were in a trash bag to be washed. The work had been his doing. It wasn’t a comparison he was able to make, but he didn’t like clutter any more than Lilly did.

“We’ll drop the laundry off and get lunch, then find which schools you will be attending,” his mother said.

The old lady had a washing machine and a dryer. Why didn’t they just use them? Soon they’d have to anyway because what little money they had would be gone. He argued his case but wasn’t surprised he couldn’t talk his mother out of going to the laundry.

“We don’t want to be any trouble,” she said.

When he came out of his room with clean clothes on and his hair wet from a quick shower his mother started talking about her list of things to do. “We’ll get Krank’s dog food. I gave him milk toast but that won’t last him.”

Caleb tuned her out. He figured she was talking to avoid having to think. If she started thinking it would scare her, and she would begin to wonder if she’d made a mistake, which she had, but who was he to tell her that?

“Caleb? Did you hear me?”

“Sorry?”

“I filled Krank’s water dish so he should be okay until we get back.” In other words, Krank wasn’t going with them.

It was Marie who voiced an objection before he could.

“Krank don’t like to be by hisself until he gets to like a place.”

“Krank doesn’t run the world, my love.” Her sweet smile kept the rebuke from sounding mean but Marie got the message.

“Yes’m.”

“You were with me when I checked the yard. There’s no way he can get out. He’ll be fine. We won’t be gone that long.”

Marie didn’t look convinced and Caleb certainly wasn’t, but Mom had decided and that was that. Krank would be staying at the old lady’s house while they did laundry and got registered at school.

“Let’s get going.”

Caleb got in the front; Marie and Alex got in the back accompanied by a lot of grumbling.

“Why can’t I ride up there?” Marie whined.

“Me, front,” Alex demanded.

“You know the rules,” Annie said. “Buckle up.”

They’d barely avoided getting a ticket in one town because of the law about children riding in the front seat. His mother wasn’t about to run that risk again. As it was they’d gotten a thirty-minute lecture on seat belts and booster seats. Caleb had been riding shotgun since.

“I’m hungry.”

Caleb grimaced. Alex hungry was not something any of them wanted to deal with.

“McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s!” Marie cheered.

“Enough, Marie! Alex, where would you like to eat?”

Caleb contained his moan. One, they didn’t have money to waste on buying restaurant food, and two, asking Alex a question like that was dangerous. He could take longer than anybody just to decide whether he wanted plain bread or toast for breakfast. It was a monumental process requiring much thought.

Alex shrugged his chubby shoulders.

“Sweetie, what would you like to eat? Hamburger? Tacos? I think I saw a Taco Bell when we drove in last night.”

Caleb thought his mom should just decide and get it over with. His little brother’s brain was freezing up with the thought of having to make a choice.

“Tell you what, while I’m driving you decide, and then let me know.”

Marie rolled her eyes.

“Enough of your drama, little miss,” Annie said. “Let’s get moving.”

By the time they were driving away the whining yips from the back yard had turned into full-throated woofs.

“Mom…”

“I’m not riding all over town with Krank in the car, Marie, so don’t start.”

“I’m hungry, I’m hungry!”

“I know, but where we eat is your choice, baby boy. You tell me where you want to go and that’s where we’ll go.”

Caleb wanted to yell. The dumb kid was four years old! What did she think, that he had a list of all the fast food places on the planet in his head? What she should do is smack the little snot and be done with it. Caleb scrunched down in the seat ashamed he’d thought such a thing. He didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean it at all.

Marie, still clutching Polly Pig, tugged on Alex’s shirt and whispered none too softly, “McDonalds!”

Caleb wasn’t keen on Mickey D.’s. That’s where they’d eaten nearly the whole trip. One more burger and fries and he’d barf. He was tempted to put his two cents in and ask for Taco Bell but it was more trouble than it was worth.

“Here we are,” his mom said, pulling to a stop in front of a bleak building with a sign that read Lots of Suds Wash and Wait.

“I’ll load the washers and get them started. We can run get lunch while the clothes are washing.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I know, baby boy. Let me do this and then we can get something to eat. You just decide where, okay?”

With that she was out of the car leaving Alex to be stared down by Marie. Caleb felt so bad about thinking Mom should smack his little brother he kept quiet while they bickered.

“Decide,” Marie said, her eyes narrowed in a mean squint.

“I’m hungry! I’m hungry, hungry, HUNGREEEE!”

“I’m gonna tell Mom you said McDonald’s,” Marie said, hugging Polly.

“Hey,” Caleb said when Alex’s lip trembled. “Here’s some thoughts, Burger King, you like their stuff; Mom’s already said Taco Bell; I’m thinking Pizza Hut or maybe DQ.”

“DQ! DQ!”

“NOOOOO. I want McDonald’s!”

“Marie, you don’t get to choose, and if you keep this up you know…”

The car door opened preventing Caleb from finishing what he was going to say which was just as well, because Marie would have argued anyway.

“So, have you decided, little guy?”

“DQ! DQ!”

“Okay, I think I saw one close to the exit coming into town.”

With their destination in mind Marie settled into humming to Polly Pig. Alex bounced his chubby legs in anticipation. For no reason he could understand Caleb’s eyes stung. He tried not to think of anything. That was best.

It was past the lunch hour when they pulled into the nearly vacant Dairy Queen parking lot.

“Here we are. Gotta hurry. The wash will be done before we get…”

“I wanna go to DQ!”

“Alex, sweetie, this is the DQ.”

“It’s not, it’s Dairy Queen. I wanna go to DQ! DQ! DQ!”

“Don’t be a toad,” Caleb growled. “This isthe DQ. You know, Dfor Dairy, Qfor Queen?”

“But I wanna go to the DQ!”

“Mooooom!” Marie protested.

Caleb could see the building tension behind his mother’s eyes. He reached over and unbuckled Alex’s seatbelt and pulled him through the gap between the bucket seats and onto his lap.

“Alex,” he whispered softly. “Cut it out, you’re upsetting Mom.”

“DQDQDQDQDQDQD…”

Caleb held on to his squirming brother.

“Q! I gotta pee pee.” The last was said softly.

“Don’t pee on me! Be still!”

Annie clutched her head and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Caleb take your brother to potty and come back to the car. Marie, you stay. I’ll be back with the order and you’ll all have to take what you get!” With that she opened the door, stepped out and slammed it shut.

Caleb opened the passenger door and was trying to push Alex off when he saw a slightly surprised look cross his little brother’s face followed immediately by a dark spot that spread across his jeans and onto Caleb.

“ALEX!”

“Alex peed his pa’ ants, Alex peed his pa’ ants, Alex peed his pa’ ants!”

“Shut it, Marie!” Caleb shouted.

Alex started to cry and buried his face in his older brother’s neck. “Soweee! Soweee!” he sobbed and hung on for all he was worth.

“I want to go home!” Marie whined.

“Don’t we all,” said Caleb. “Don’t we all.”

Of course where that might be was a whole other question, but for sure it wasn’t at the old lady’s house.