Summer Of Fear (7 page)

Julia’s glance flickered from Mike’s face to Pete’s and back to Mike’s again.

“You’re all so nice to want me,” she said. “I—I suppose I should go. It just seems—so soon—”

“It’s the way your parents would want it,” Dad said firmly and reached over to put his hand on her shoulder. “Life goes on, and we have to go on with it. You’re a brave girl, Julia; I can’t tell you how proud we are to have you part of our family.”

Mike stayed on a few minutes longer and then I excused myself to walk him to the door. I went with him out onto the porch to see him down the steps. It was still dusk, a faded, gentle light, lingering softly as twilight does in summer. The children down the block were all out playing, enjoying the fun of a delayed nightfall. Their voices lifted, light and giggly, punctuated by squeals. Some little girl was chanting the old rope-jumping jingle:

Pomp-pomp-pompadour, Janie,

Calling for Ida at the door—

Now Ida is the one who’s gonna have the fun,

And we won’t need Janie anymore!

“I remember being ten years old,” I said. It seemed suddenly a million years ago.

“I remember too,” Mike said. “You were pretty scrawny and your nose ran a lot.”

“Liar!” I cried, outraged.

“Okay—okay—I was just kidding.” He rumpled my hair. “You’ve got a cute nose, and I guess it didn’t used to run any more than most kids’ noses. Want to do something after dinner?”

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, walk over to the park or something. It’ll still be light. We could take Trickle on his leash. It would be a good outing for him,”

“I don’t know where he is,” I said. “He ran off somewhere.”

“Well, just us then. Or we could take your cousin along if you want to.”

“Well—” I paused, searching for words. I didn’t know how to say it, but I didn’t want to take Julia with us to the park. Taking her with us to the dance was enough. At that moment all I wanted in the world was to be alone with Mike in some far place away from arguments and problems and family obligations, some place where I could be horrid and selfish and not spend one thought on brave, suffering Julia who needed us so.

“I can’t,” I said. “Mother wants me home. She says going out last night was enough. She and I haven’t been getting along too well today.”

“You and your mom?” Mike was surprised. “You two always get along!”

“It was just one of those days,” I said. “Something happened and—well, it set us off.”

“It’ll iron out by tomorrow,” Mike said comfortingly. “Your mom’s pretty cool. Want to come out to the pool in the morning and watch me laboring away on my watch tower?”

“Laboring!” I said, jokingly. “What a cushy job!” But my heart wasn’t in the kidding. Mike must have realized it because he leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the end of the nose before he started down the steps.

He was halfway down the walk and I was re-entering the house when he called back, “Rae, isn’t that Trickle?”

“Where?” I cried, turning.

“Over there under the corner of the porch.”

“Trickle!” I exclaimed. “Is that your

I went down the steps and over to the place where Mike was pointing, and it was indeed Trickle. He had dug a little trench and was lying in it, and when I got close to him he began to lift his tail and let it fall with a slow, even beat to let me know that he was glad to see me.

“He looks funny,” I said, dropping to my knees and running my hand over the silly head. “Doesn’t he look funny, Mike?”

Mike came over to stand beside me.

“He looks sickish,” he said. “Maybe he’s eaten something he shouldn’t have. You’d better leave him outside tonight. You don’t want him upchucking all over the house.”

“I don’t have much choice,” I told him. “Dad says I can’t bring him inside anyway. I think I’ll take him around to the back and fix up a bed for him to sleep on.”

Trickle wouldn’t get up when I prodded him, so I picked him up in my arms and carried him around the side of the house to the backyard. I left him there while I went in through the kitchen door and got him a bowl of water and I stopped on the way back to take a cushion off of the lawn chair. I brought them back to him and set them both down on the ground beside him.

Trickle sniffed at the cushion and then gave a great sigh and settled himself in the grass beside it. He didn’t even look at the water.

“Don’t you worry,” I whispered, moving one hand to scratch his tummy. “People aren’t going to stay mad at you forever. Everybody has a right to lose his temper once in a while, even a dog. By tomorrow I bet it’s all forgotten and you’re back inside sleeping on the foot of my bed.”

But when tomorrow came, nobody had forgotten anything. Dad sent Bobby out with a rope to tie Trickle to the elm tree.

On Monday of the following week we had the memorial service for Aunt Marge and Uncle Ryan, and on Tuesday the boxes containing their personal possessions arrived from Springfield. Dad and Peter carted them up to the attic and stored them there against the day when Julia might feel like opening them and going through the contents.

“Not now,” she said. “I just can’t do it now.”

Dad said, “Of course not, honey. Nobody expects you to do anything right now except eat and sleep and try to get used to your new family.”

They were standing in the hallway outside the door to the den and I was seated on the den floor, cutting out the material for my new dress. Their voices came to me as clearly as though they were in the same room.

“That part isn’t hard,” Julia said. “You’re so good to me, Tom, I’m used to you already.”

The scissors slipped from my hand and tumbled soundlessly into a mound of pink cloth. Had that been Julia speaking, my cousin Julia? That throaty voice, rich with warm affection—could it have been the same one that had risen in fury—”You vigrous, rat-fanged varmant!”—a shriek of rage that had shrilled through the front yard?

And—”Tom”! She had called my father “Tom.” Why not “Uncle Tom” as she called my mother “Aunt Leslie”? True, it was Mother who had been her mother’s sister, but I had called Julia’s father “Uncle Ryan” even though he was no blood relation. “Tom” sounded so strange from the lips of a girl so little older than myself, so oddly familiar, almost rude.

But my father did not seem to find it so. He laughed, a pleased little laugh, and I could picture him ruffling her hair, the way he did mine when he was feeling fond and friendly.

“We’re not ‘being good,’” he said, “we’re just ‘being family.’ We love you, Julie, and we want you to be happy.”

Julia went upstairs then and Dad came into the den, looking for the paper. He gave me a playful tap with his foot as he went by and then paused and said, “What’s that you’re making?”

“A dress,” I said, “for the dance. It’s the end of this week.”

“Pink?” Dad said. “Since when does a carrot-top like you start wearing pink? I thought it was against the law or something.”

“Why shouldn’t I wear something different once in a while?” I said irritably. “The material was on sale and it’s pretty so I bought it.”

“Don’t get your back up,” Dad said, locating the paper and settling himself into a chair to read it. “It’s fine with me whatever you wear. You’re the one who’s always screamed if somebody gave you something pink.”

He was right. I had never worn pink. It didn’t go with orange hair and freckles. I sat staring down unhappily at the soft piles of rose-colored material. Why I had bought it I simply couldn’t imagine. There had been other colors just as pretty that would have looked fine on me. And the pattern—why had I chosen a style so full up top? It was sure to bag, and altering it would take forever. In order to have it in time for the dance, I would have to make the dress according to the pattern, and go looking as though I were wearing somebody’s misfitting hand-me-downs.

As it happened, I need not have wasted time worrying. I never wore the pink dress, and I did not go to the dance.

When I woke on Friday morning I knew that something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. I squirmed uncomfortably in my bed, feeling hot and unpleasant and strangely scratchy. I would have liked to have closed my eyes and gone back to sleep, but the morning sunlight reached from the window across the room and fell, light and lemony, upon my face. It was its touch upon my eyelids that had wakened me, and I knew it would not permit me to fall asleep again.

With a sigh I got out of bed and stumbled groggily across the room to the bathroom. I reached for my toothbrush, glanced into the mirror over the basin, and froze. The face that looked back at me was not my own. It was a grotesque mask, bloated and red and ghastly!

For a moment I could not move or speak. I simply stood there staring. Then I gave a strangled gasp and closed my eyes. It couldn’t be true, I thought. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, every girl’s worst fear come true—to rise in the morning and find that in the night you had changed into some sort of dreadful creature, inhuman and repulsive!

It’s the lighting, I told myself frantically, or the mirror or something! I kept my eyes closed a few seconds more and then opened them, and it was not a dream and it was not the lighting. The beady little eyes, peering out from slits in the swollen face, were my eyes, and the curly mass of bright-colored hair that framed the face was also mine.

With a little sob I turned away from the mirror and rushed out of the bathroom.

“What is it?” Julia was sitting up in bed, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. “Is something the matter?”

“Yes,” I choked. “Yes—something is.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I don’t want anybody to look at me!”

I opened the bedroom door and ran out into the hall and down the stairs.

“Mother!” I cried. “Mother!”

She was in the kitchen, standing at the stove, with her back to the doorway. As I rushed in she turned and her eyes widened.

“Good Lord,” she exclaimed, “what’s happened to you?”

“I don’t know,” I said shakily. “Mother, I’m scared! What could it be?”

“It looks like hives.” She shoved the frying pan off the burner and came over to look at me more closely. “Yes, I’d swear it’s hives. I had an aunt who used to get them whenever she ate strawberries. The thing is that people who are susceptible to hives usually start getting them in babyhood. I can’t imagine having them for the first time as a teenager.”

“What can I do about them?” I asked. “How do you get rid of them?”

“I’ll call Dr. Morgan,” Mother said, “I think he’d better look at you. If it is hives there may be something you can take for them, and if it isn’t we want to know what you do have. Go get some clothes on and I’ll call and see if he’ll see you before the regular office hours.”

So I went back upstairs to dress and found Julia still in bed, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling, I hurried past her, not speaking, and hauled some clothes out of the bureau and went into the bathroom to dress. There I received another shock, for the ugly red splotches were not confined to my face. I had them all over my body, some of them studded with great white lumps that resembled mosquito bites but were much larger, and my feet were so swollen that I could not wedge them into my shoes.

I stuck my feet into a pair of floppy bedroom slippers and went back down to the kitchen. Bobby was there now, shoveling down cereal, and he let out a low whistle and said, “What’s the matter with your face?”

“Mother thinks it’s hives,” I told him, trying not to cry.

“I talked to the nurse,” Mother said. “Dr. Morgan will see you, but they want you to come in the side door so you won’t expose the people in the waiting room if this turns out to be something contagious. Come on, I’ll drive you over.”

An hour later we were home again, assured that I was not contagious. What I had was hives, as Mother had suspected, and Dr. Morgan had prescribed a medication that was to be taken every four hours and told me to take baths with baking soda in the water.

“It’s an allergic reaction,” he said. “Can you think of anything unusual you may have eaten in the past twenty-four hours? Have you taken any medicines? It’s strange that you have no history of anything like this before.”

“No,” I told him miserably. “I’m not taking medicine and I haven’t eaten anything I haven’t eaten a hundred times before. How long will I be this way?”

“Not long, I hope,” he said kindly. “This medicine is usually quite effective. Twenty-four hours should do it. If it doesn’t, phone me and I’ll change the dosage.”

“Twenty-four hours!” I cried. “But there’s a dance tonight! I’ve been counting on going for weeks!”

“That’s a shame,” Dr. Morgan said, “but it’s not the end of the world, now, is it? At your age there’s always another dance.”

I could have kicked him. In fact, I really might have if my poor swollen feet hadn’t been wedged so uncomfortably into the slippers.

When we got home Julia was finally up and dressed, and I broke the news to her as soon as I saw her.

“What I have is hives,” I told her, “and they’re not going to get better before tomorrow, so the dance is off. I’m going to call Mike at work and leave a message for him at the pool office. I wouldn’t let him see me like this for anything.”

“I’ve seen people like that before,” Julia said. She regarded me with interest. “The mountain people call it ‘the crud.’ What does it feel like? Does it hurt much?”

“No,” I said, “but it itches like crazy.” I turned to Mother. “Where do you keep the baking soda?”

“I’ll get it for you.” She frowned thoughtfully. “I hate to see Julia miss this dance, Rae, just because you aren’t going to be able to go. Isn’t there some way she can go without you? It’s such a nice chance for her to meet some young people. Couldn’t she go with Carolyn and her date?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose she could. I’ll phone Carolyn and ask her.”

“Please, don’t,” Julia said. “I’ve never met Carolyn’s boyfriend, and I wouldn’t feel right pushing in on them like that. Don’t worry about it, Rachel. I really don’t mind missing it. I’m not a very good dancer anyway.”

And so it was settled, or I thought it was settled. I spent the day shut in the bedroom reading and trying not to scratch or in the bathtub soaking in baking soda. Every four hours I took a dose of medicine, and a few minutes later I would go and look in the mirror to see what result it was having. I suppose I had in the farthest back corner of my mind the tiniest ray of hope that the medicine would produce some miracle and that the transformation that had occurred in such a short time would un-occur just as quickly. It didn’t.