Little Sister (18 page)

A door opened upstairs, and Beth heard Francie call her name. Beth walked toward the foot of the stairs. Francie was hidden from view at the top.

“Thanks for helping me,” she said.

“That’s okay,” said Beth.

She could hear that Francie had not budged. Beth wanted to say something friendly or consoling, but she could not think what it might be. After a few moments the girl’s footsteps receded down the hall, and her door closed. Slowly Beth climbed the stairs, determined to try to start some kind of bridge between them. She walked to the door of Francie’s room and stood outside. Inside, she heard the sound of the girl sobbing.

The sobs startled her. It was as if she finally had discovered evidence of Francie’s misery. Beth put her hand on the doorknob. She wanted to go in and put an arm around her sister and speak to her. She felt her own loneliness answering the sorrowful sounds from inside the room.

You hardly know her, she reminded herself. Don’t intrude on her private feelings.

Telling herself that the girl’s sobs seemed to be quieting down, Beth let go of the doorknob and backed away from the door. With a quiet tread, so as not to be heard, she made her way back down the stairs.

ANDREW HUSTLED UP THE HILL
and cut across a field. He knew he would have to hurry if he wanted to catch Francie before her classes started. His plan was to catch her before she went into school. He knew that all the kids waited in the lobby for fifteen minutes to a half hour before the doors opened, so he had to be sure to get there on time.

He felt he should be tired, having been up all night, but he was tense and full of energy. His mother had been suspicious about his going off early to work, but she had accepted his explanation that he had not put up all the stock because he left early yesterday to cover for Noah. He had wanted to howl in glee when he said good-bye to her, knowing that he would never have to see or be near her again. While he hurried along there was a little skip in his step as he pictured her face when she came home and found him and her precious car gone without a trace.

He was slightly out of breath but not at all fatigued when he finally reached the single-story building that served as junior high and high school for Oldham and three other nearby towns. It was a plain ocher-colored structure, built in the fifties to accommodate the increase in children that had resulted after the war, even in Oldham, Maine. Andrew had attended the school himself, and he felt a familiar shiver of revulsion as he approached the swinging glass doors that provided entrance to the building.

As he pushed back the door familiar sounds and smells assaulted him. The odor of pencil shavings and fresh wax mingled with the perfumes and after-shaves of the preening teenagers crammed into the foyer. Their chatter was deafening as they pretended to talk to their friends, all the while flirting and tempting with glances, gestures from beringed fingers, the flexing of young bodies in tight clothes.

He had never understood it, never been able to join it. Any awkward advances he had made had been mocked. He had been marked from grade school as weird, undesirable. He had always known it, although he tried to pretend that he didn’t, or didn’t care. Now, standing in the crush of the excited students, he felt his breath coming in gasps, and he broke out in a sweat. His clammy hand groped to pull the door open so he could run. Then, suddenly, he remembered. He was here to see his girl. He had a girl. The thought filled him with a creeping warmth. His heartbeat quieted. He looked up at the clock above the door. He had made good time. And his girl was here in this throng.

One of the teachers came to the inside doors and unlocked them. The students surged into the building, pushing and chattering. Andrew wanted to stop someone and ask him if he’d seen Francie. He wanted to say the words my girlfriend in these halls. He would ask some big, handsome guy. A guy who looked popular.

Just then he spotted her. She was edging up to the doorway in a crowd of children. They were the babies of the school, who endured the most shoving. They bounced along like pebbles on a tide.

“Francie,” he called out, waving to her.

She looked up over the other kids and saw him there, smiling eagerly at her, gesturing to her. She pushed her glasses up on her nose, lowered her head, and pushed a little harder to get through the door.

Andrew glowered and called her name again, in a harsh voice. But she huddled in among the kids, and there was no doubt this time that she was ignoring him, trying to get away from him.

Andrew tried to elbow his way past the other students to get to her and caught a girl’s barrette in the fabric of his coat sleeve.

“Oww…” the girl wailed, reaching for the crown of her head.

Andrew saw Francie carried through the door, her ash blond hair disappearing into the darkness of the main lobby. He jerked his arm back and forth, trying to free himself of the girl to whom he was fettered by the barrette.

“Cut it out,” the girl shrieked, while her friends yelled, “Stop it,” at him, and one girl tried to undo the clip from his waving arm.

“Let go of me,” Andrew growled, searching the doorway for the sight of Francie, but she was gone.

“There,” the girlfriend cried as the barrette popped open and her friend’s hair was loosened from Andrew’s arm. There were tears in the long-haired girl’s eyes as she rubbed her reddened scalp. A clump of her hairs trailed from the arm of Andrew’s coat as he threw down the barrette and started for the door.

“Don’t say you’re sorry, jerk,” hissed the friend who had undone the clip, but Andrew was already breaking through the last few students who were dawdling on their way into class.

The main hallway of the building was large and gloomy with the auditorium on one side and the school offices on the other. He looked around, cursing, for he didn’t know where to find her. The corridors branched off the main hallway, and after a moment’s hesitation, he began to rove restlessly up and down them, looking for the eighth-grade signs outside the classroom doors. Teachers were coming out into the hallway and closing their classroom doors as Andrew rushed by, peering into their rooms.

“May I help you?” asked a crew-cutted teacher coolly as he looked Andrew up and down.

“No,” said Andrew. “I’m just looking for my—uh—a friend.” He glanced across the hall and saw the sign for
O’NEILL
, grade 8, lettered on oak tag beside the door. Craning his neck, he saw Francie, seated several rows back by the window.

“There she is,” he muttered. “’Scuse me.” He hurried over to the classroom door. Mrs. O’Neill was not yet in her classroom, and Andrew stood in the doorway and called Francie’s name. The girl sitting next to Francie nudged her, and Francie looked up and then back down at her desk, her face white.

“Come here a minute,” Andrew insisted.

“Go away,” she said.

“Get out here right now,” he demanded. The buzz in the classroom subsided at the sound of Andrew’s angry voice. Francie hesitated for a minute and then got up and walked out into the hall as the others watched. In a minute the chatter picked up again.

“What do you want?” Francie asked sullenly.

“Hey, smile,” said Andrew. “This is our lucky day.”

“Sure,” she said with a snort.

“Listen, I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

Francie looked up angrily at him. “Andrew, what happened to you last night?”

Andrew looked surprised. “Last night? What do you mean?”

“Where did you go? That old man caught me in his barn.”

“He did?” said Andrew. “What happened? I guess he let you go.”

“Yeah, he let me go finally. But first he tied me up, and he called my sister. And he almost called the police.”

“Well, yeah. But everything’s okay now.”

“You left me there. He had a gun, and he shot it at me. How could you just leave me there?”

Andrew frowned at her as if he were concentrating on her question. “I had to,” he said. “You’ll see why when I tell you this.”

“Forget it,” said Francie, turning away from him.

He grabbed her arm. “Wait. Don’t be mad. I have everything all arranged. That’s why I had to leave last night.”

“Arranged for what?”

“For us to run away!”

“Stop yelling,” she said, looking up and down the hallway. People were still straggling into their classes, settling in for the morning. “Why should I go with you?” But her tone was more fretful than angry.

“You see, last night wasn’t the right timing. I didn’t have things ready. Now we’ve got everything packed. I’ve got the money. All we have to do is go and get the car. Come on,” he said. “I came here to get you. We can go right now.”

“I can’t,” said Francie.

“Why not?”

“I can’t just leave school. The teacher will call my sister.”

Andrew glared at her and dropped her arm. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” he insisted. “Everything is ready.”

His angry tone made her heart sink. She became immediately conciliatory. “How about later?”

“When?”

“After school.”

“It’s too late.”

“My last period is study hall. I can skip that,” she offered.

The door to the ladies’ room opened, and Cindy O’Neill came out into the hall, smoothing down her skirt. She looked coolly at the pair in the hallway and then spoke to Francie. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your seat?”

Francie nodded her head nervously and threw a glance at Andrew, who was glaring at the teacher with icy, piercing eyes.

“Three o’clock?” Francie whispered hopefully.

“The stone wall, by the post office,” he said.

Cindy met his flinty gaze with her own. “I don’t believe you’re a student here, Andrew.”

“I’m leaving,” he said.

Francie nodded at him as he looked back at her. Three o’clock. It was too late. It messed up all his plans. He stomped down the hall and slammed through the front doors of the building. He would go to work for a few hours, maybe take himself a little going-away present from the cash drawer. Three o’clock would still give them a few hours’ head start. It would have to do.

BETH LIFTED THE LID ON THE OLD TRUNK
with the broken lock, brushing away the cobwebs as she did it. She was feeling quite proud of herself, having gotten through almost everything else in the attic already. It was going well. She had developed a rhythm as well as a rather thick skin about saving things, and it looked as if the whole house might be done tomorrow.

You are going to be a success in business, she thought. Good organizing skills. She pulled an empty garbage bag up beside the trunk, prepared to toss out the contents. The lid fell back with a snap, and a boxful of yellowed lace filled her view. As she reached in to pull it out, Beth recognized her mother’s wedding dress. She had not seen it in years.

Beth sat back on her heels and stared at the crumpled dress. She had played dress-up in it when she was little, but her mother had caught her and warned her not to rip it because she might want to wear it herself one day.

She saved it for me, Beth thought. She always was an optimist. Beth sighed and then smiled, thinking of her mother, as she held the dress absently on her lap. She had always been tenderhearted and sentimental. Beth remembered teasing her because she would cry and cry at those old black-and-white movies on the late show. Beth found herself wondering if her mother would have liked Mike. She pictured her mother’s gentle, approving eyes, and she knew that her mother would have thought he was great. An ideal husband.

Beth shook her head and looked down at the dress. Her mother wasn’t exactly the best judge of husbands. It wasn’t as if the dress had proved to be so lucky for her.

Beth hesitated, trying to decide what to do with it. Even if I ever do get married, she thought, / probably wouldn’t wear something this lacy. But she felt uncomfortable throwing it away. Her mother had dreamed of her wearing it. She had saved it for her all these years.

All right, Beth thought. I’ll find someplace to keep it. She lifted the bulky dress, now crisp with age, out of the box, and carefully started to fold it into a manageable size for storing. As she turned it over she noticed a note pinned to the bodice of the dress. It said, “For Beth and Francie. Your mother’s wedding gown.” It was written in the unmistakably stilted script of her father’s hand.

Beth stared at the note for some time, feeling slightly dazed as she realized that he was the one responsible for labeling the wedding dress and carefully storing it in the trunk. It took her a few minutes to realize that the ringing in her ears was the sound of the telephone.

Having dropped the dress into the trunk, she bolted down the stairs and grabbed the phone. On the other end was Maxine, her assistant at the office.

“How’s it going?” Maxine asked sympathetically.

“Not too bad,” Beth said, chewing thoughtfully on her lip. “I should be back in a couple of days.”

“I’m afraid,” Maxine said, “you’re going to have to get back sooner than that.”

“Like when?”

“Like tomorrow. It’s an emergency. Hanley just called from California. He’s flying in tonight, and he wants to see you tomorrow, before he makes the final decision about the headquarters building. He’s going to be here only the one day, and he insists on seeing you.”

“Damn,” said Beth. “We need to get that job. You couldn’t stall him?”

“I sweet-talked him every which way,” said Maxine. “I tried.”

“I know,” said Beth. “I know you did. It’s just that I’m going to have to fly down there tonight and then turn around and come right back up here in a day or two. What a waste of time and money.”

“I know it. I’m sorry.”

The doorbell started to ring, and Beth groaned. “Hold on a minute, Maxine. This place is suddenly Grand Central.”

Beth rushed over to the door and opened it. Cindy O’Neill stood on the front steps and looked worried as Beth threw the door open.

“Beth, do you have a minute?”

“Come in,” said Beth. “Just a sec. I’m on the phone.” Beth returned to the phone as Cindy stepped into the living room and stood there, looking around at the disarray.