Secret Sisters

by Tristi Pinkston

  “Wonderful.” Jeannie beamed. “I knew you’d know what to do.”

  “We could take her over some fresh bread and jam,” Tansy offered. “I did some baking this morning, and I have lots of strawberry jam from this summer.”

  “That would be nice,” Ida Mae told her. “So you’d like to go over with me?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “I would, but I have a doctor’s appointment,” Arlette announced, flipping her knitting to start a new row. The socks from last week were a distant memory—this week’s pair was cream. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t like Arlette to use such a sedate color.

  “That’s all right, Arlette,” Ida Mae told her. “Tansy and I will cover it.”

  After finalizing details on the visiting teaching assignments and talking about the upcoming blood drive, the sisters went home, and Ida Mae rubbed her temples. Mary Dunn was a sweet girl who probably couldn’t be more than twenty-five and already had four children. Her husband, Nick, was a good-natured fellow who seemed to appreciate his gem of a wife and always spoke highly of her. She wished she had some sort of magic wand to wave and create a job for Nick, but in Omni, there just weren’t a lot of businesses. Most of the families were supported by the turkey industry or they commuted into a larger town. It wasn’t easy to live clear out here and still make a living.

  That afternoon, bundled up to their chins, Tansy and Ida Mae picked their way up the icy walk to the Dunns’ front door. Mary opened it, holding a baby on her hip. Ida Mae started to speak, but Tansy beat her to it.

  “Mary? I made an extra loaf of bread this morning, and if you don’t take it, I’ll have to freeze it, and my Earl hates eating bread that’s been frozen and then thawed. Would you please help me out? And I brought jam, too—can’t eat bread without jam.”

  Mary blinked, shifting the child to her other hip. “I suppose so . . .”

  “Wonderful! We’ll just bring it in for you. Your hands are full.”

  Tansy adeptly slipped into the house, leaving Ida Mae with a quirked eyebrow. Tansy was good. Really good.

  Ida Mae followed her lead, and soon they were standing in the spotless kitchen.

  “You can just set that on the table,” Mary said, placing a pacifier in the child’s mouth.

  “Oh, but this is freezer jam,” Tansy said. Before Mary could stop her, she opened the door, placing the container on the shelf. Ida Mae took a peek. The freezer was empty, with the exception of two ice cube trays.

  Ida Mae pressed her lips together. “Mary, I think we should have a little talk,” she said quietly, taking her by the elbow and guiding her into the living room.

  Once seated, she came straight to the point. “You don’t have food, do you?”

  Mary looked down at the carpet. “We have a little. A bag of apples and some oatmeal.”

  “And when will you be able to get more?”

  “Oh, Nick’s bringing some groceries tonight,” she said. “He called and said he’d go shopping on the way home.”

  Ida Mae knew the girl was lying, but she didn’t want to press her. She also couldn’t force her to accept help. “That’s good. If you need anything, you let us know, okay? We can work wonders.”

  Mary smiled, although it looked stiff. “Okay, Sister Babbitt. I will.”

  Tansy held her tongue until they were back in Ida Mae’s car, then she burst out, “Why isn’t she telling us the truth?”

  “I don’t know.” Ida Mae started the car and let it warm a minute, even though they’d only been inside a short time and the engine hadn’t cooled. “Maybe she’s ashamed. Maybe she’s feeling prideful. Maybe her husband doesn’t want anyone to know he can’t provide. I wish I knew.” She pulled out onto the road, noting how deserted and lonely it was.

  She took Tansy home and then pulled in her own driveway, mulling over the Dunns’ situation. She’d been thinking the whole way home, but was no closer to an answer than when she started.

  Ren was in the fridge making a sandwich out of leftover meatloaf. “Hi,” he said, pulling out the mayonnaise. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, trying to hide her shudder. There was nothing worse, in her opinion, than cold meatloaf. Unless it was cold meatloaf with mayonnaise, but trying to convince Ren to eat anything without mayonnaise was a hopeless proposition. The boy was positively addicted. “How was work?”

  “Great.” He had started just that morning at the town’s only VCR/DVD repair shop and movie rental store, Groovy Movies. “I fixed a jammed VCR and rented out all four copies of The Phantom Menace.”

  Ida Mae smiled. She’d never met such a Star Wars fanatic. “They were all rented on your recommendation, I assume.”

  “But of course.” He took a huge bite of sandwich and chased it with a gulp of root beer. “How was your day?”

  “Discouraging.” She pulled out a chair and sat down, feeling older and heavier than she had in some time. “There’s a family in our ward who’s been unemployed for months, and I think they’re out of food with no way to get more. She says they’re going shopping tonight, but I just can’t accept that. I wish I knew a way to tell if she was lying to me.”

  “Hmmm.” Ren chewed thoughtfully, his face a study in concentration. “How opposed are you to a little spying?” he asked after several long moments.

  “Spying?” Ida Mae’s head came up. “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Well, what if I came up with a way for you to tell if she was lying?”

  She shook her head. “As tempting as that is, Ren, it’s her responsibility. Even if I catch her in a lie, it’s her choice to lie to me, and her choice not to ask for help.”

  “You said this was a family. Are there children, then?”

  Ida Mae saw the Dunns’ four children in her mind, two girls and two boys, ranging in age from six to one year. They were darling little things, and the thought of them going hungry . . . “What do you have in mind?” she asked.

  “I have this gizmo that’s no bigger than a cockroach, but it’s a camera,” he said. “You stick it somewhere, and it can see everything in the room. The only problem is, you have to be within a thousand yards of it to pick up the picture on the receiver. I guess you could say, it’s a bug I haven’t worked out.”

  She chose to ignore the pun. “What are you thinking?”

  “What if you placed this camera somewhere in the kitchen? Then you could see what goes in and comes out. You’d know if she was lying, and you’d know if they needed you to bring them food.”

  Ida Mae shook her head. “I just don’t know, Ren. That sounds . . . illegal.”

  He shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

  She pushed herself up and walked over to the fridge. She couldn’t deny the light she’d seen in Ren’s eyes when he talked about his camera. This was his life’s dream, and if his invention really worked, he could be set. And those hungry children . . . her eyes fell on the kitchen magnet her visiting teachers had brought over. It was a dried flower encased in plastic, and attached was a card. “If you need anything, give us a call,” it stated in cheery handwriting, complete with names and telephone numbers. Her brain began to churn.

  “I think I have a way to get that camera into the house,” she told Ren. “I need to call an emergency meeting.”

  *

  “It’s a wonderful idea!” Tansy clasped her hands together, reminding Ida Mae of a sixty-year-old Kewpie doll. “We can’t let those poor children go hungry, can we?”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” Arlette said. “You’d be breaking—how many laws?” She clacked her needles together for emphasis. “The last thing Bishop Sylvester needs is for his entire Relief Society presidency to end up serving jail time.”

  “It’s more exciting than serving funeral potatoes,” Tansy shot back.

  “Hey, now, let’s not be harsh,” Ren interjected. “I have enjoyed many a pan of funeral potatoes in my time, and I don’t think they deserve to be spoken of in such
a fashion.”

  Ida Mae shook her head. “Let’s think about this rationally, shall we? On one hand, we would be breaking some laws. Well, only one that I can think of. We wouldn’t be trespassing, really—we’d just be spying. I suppose it is a little nosy, and we are interfering with free agency. If it was just Mary and Nick, I’d say, leave them alone. But there are young children involved, and if they were to exercise their agency, I’m sure they would choose to eat rather than not. Are we agreed on that much, at least?” All around the room, heads nodded.

  “Couldn’t you just . . . leave the food anyway?” Hannah spoke up, bouncing Baby Jeremiah on her hip. Her other son, Joey, played quietly in the corner with his cars.

  “Let’s not get hasty!” Ren jumped into the conversation again, forgetting his role as advisor and inventor only. “I’d really like the chance to try out my toy in real life. If it works, I can sell it for a heap.”

  “To whom? Thugs? Miscreants? Evildoers?” Arlette shook a magenta sock at him. “I don’t know what you’re up to, young man, but I’d be worried about you if I were Ida Mae.”

  “Well, you’re not,” Ida Mae reminded her. “And we’re getting off track. I don’t want to strain our allotted resources by taking food to people who don’t need it. If Nick does come home with groceries tonight, we’ll have all that food to give someone else. And if he doesn’t, then we’ll know what to do.”

  Arlette pressed her lips together. Ida Mae watched her out of the corner of her eye. Budgeting was Arlette’s specialty, and Ida Mae knew she was calculating the cost of wasted food.

  “Very well, then,” she said. “But I’d better go along to make sure you only break one law.”

  “This is so exciting!” Tansy gave a little bounce in her seat. Ida Mae cringed. How long would the couch springs hold up under that kind of strain?

  “I wish I could go,” Hannah said. “But Jeremiah will need his nap.”

  “We’ll fill you in on all the details,” Ida Mae promised. “Now, let’s make our plans.”

  Chapter Four

  Tansy and Ida Mae retraced their steps to the Dunns’ front door, avoiding all the ice patches. Mary answered with a different child on her hip, but the same tired look on her face.

  “Sisters! I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said. Ida Mae couldn’t decide if her expression was one of surprise or dismay.

  “I got all the way home and remembered I forgot something,” Tansy said. She rummaged in her bag and brought out a card decorated with a huge silk flower. “This is a fridge magnet,” she said, handing it to Mary. “It has all our phone numbers on it. You just go ahead and hang it right on your fridge, and then if you need anything, you just call us. In the meantime, it will hold your shopping lists or coupons or anything else. It really is very strong.”

  Mary turned the card and read the words on the front. “Thank you,” she said, moving it out of the grasp of the child on her hip. “I’ll hang it up right now.”

  She closed the door after the sisters stepped off the porch. Ida Mae shook her head as she pulled out her keys. “You’re a wonder, Tansy. I bet you could infiltrate the Mafia and they wouldn’t know what hit them.”

  “I’ve never tried,” Tansy replied artlessly. “Do they need it?”

  Ren and Arlette looked up from their seats in the back of the car as Ida Mae and Tansy climbed in.

  “Slick as a whistle,” Ida Mae said. “We’ve got our own Miss Marple here.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Tansy said, glowing with modest pride. “I just did what had to be done.”

  “Okay, step two,” Ren said. “I’ve established a connection, and I can see the inside of the house now. The magnet has been placed on the fridge, and I count no fewer than twelve fingers trying to grab it. No—make that fifteen. There was a petal in the way and I couldn’t count right.”

  “Sorry,” Ida Mae said. “I tried to glue the flower so the whole lens would be free, but then the lens was too visible.”

  “It’s okay. I can see enough. She just scooted the magnet up higher, thank goodness. I wasn’t in the mood to get an insider’s view of a child’s mouth. You know how they taste everything.” Ren adjusted the settings on his laptop. “Okay, you can go.”

  Ida Mae drove a short distance down the road and parked in a small stand of trees. Everyone fell silent as they waited.

  Ida Mae glanced over her shoulder, noting the look of satisfaction on Ren’s face. He was in his element. She wondered, not for the first time, if she had agreed to this crazy scheme for Ren’s benefit and not just for the Dunns’.

  “Why couldn’t we stake out their house from the front?” Arlette wanted to know. “We’d be able to see if Nick brought sacks or not.”

  “There aren’t any trees or other houses across from them. We’d be completely obvious,” Ida Mae said.

  “So, let me get this straight. In order to help preserve someone else’s pride, we’re making ourselves look like fools?”

  Tansy turned and looked at Arlette with a beaming smile. “That’s right! Isn’t this fun?”

  “So what happens when the camera’s battery runs down?” Arlette asked. “It certainly can’t last very long.”

  “That’s the beauty of the whole fridge-magnet thing,” Ren said. “It doesn’t even need batteries. I added a teeny little gyro-generator to the back of the card that’s kept spinning by the magnet. It’ll power the camera almost forever.”

  The sun was nearly down and they had exhausted the hot cocoa in Ida Mae’s thermos when Nick’s car passed them on the road. “That’s him,” Ida Mae said, excitement making her voice catch in her throat. “Are you ready, Ren?”

  “Everything’s still working fine,” he said. “I’ve got a shot of the kitchen door and table.”

  Arlette muttered something under her breath.

  “What was that?” Ida Mae asked.

  “I was just wondering what color our prison uniforms are going to be,” she said. “I look terrible in orange.”

  “I look good in peach,” Tansy said. “I was told that I’m a spring.”

  “A spring what? Certainly not a spring chicken,” Arlette retorted.

  Ida Mae sighed. She didn’t know if this was good-natured bantering or contention. With Arlette, one didn’t know a lot of things.

  “Showtime!” Ren exclaimed. Arlette leaned over and peered at the screen with him.

  “Nick is coming in. His arms are empty,” Ren said.

  A gust of disappointment escaped Ida Mae’s lips.

  “But he’s taking something out of his pocket. It’s money! He just set it on the table.”

  “That’s good! He must have just gotten a job,” Tansy said.

  “But Mary doesn’t look happy,” Ren said. “She’s yelling something.”

  “Doesn’t this thing have a microphone?” Arlette asked.

  “Nope, ’fraid not.” Ren paused, then whistled. “She just picked up the money and threw it at him. It’s fluttering everywhere. Wow—there must be over a thousand dollars.”

  “If he just got a job today, how would he get a thousand dollars?” Ida Mae asked. “Mary would have told us if he’d been hired somewhere, and jobs don’t often pay you the first day. There’s usually a two-week or more wait.”

  “Maybe there was a signing bonus.” Ren pushed a few more buttons. “Well, they’ve left the kitchen. I think they’re going to be okay—that money will get them the groceries they need.”

  Ida Mae started the car. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said, pulling back onto the road. “I don’t like to think of those children going without milk.”

  “Many children do just fine without milk,” Arlette said. “We never had it—we were lactose intolerant.”

  “What did you do for calcium?” Tansy asked.

  “Broccoli,” Arlette replied. She was quiet for a minute, then added, “I can’t eat a stalk of broccoli to this day. And thank goodness for the discovery of soy milk.”

&
nbsp; Ida Mae dropped everyone off, then she and Ren returned to their house. “Your little toy was a success,” she said as she rinsed out her thermos. “Why don’t you look happy about it?”

  “It just occurred to me, I don’t have a way to get it back,” he said. “It’s pretty much stuck there on the Dunns’ fridge.”

  “Did you keep a list of parts? Can you make another one?”

  “Oh, sure, that’s not a problem. It’s just that I really was sort of attached to that one.”

  “I didn’t realize you could get attached to little . . . tiny camera things,” Ida Mae said lamely, not knowing what to call the gizmo Ren invented.

  “I get attached to everything,” he said, walking toward his room. “That’s the problem.”

  Ida Mae watched him close the door, wondering what he meant. She imagined he’d tell her in time—he was never able to keep a secret for long, especially from her.

  She opened the fridge and pulled out the eggs, deciding to mix up a batch of muffins for the next morning’s breakfast. As she stirred, she counted up all her sins and their consequences. She’d be released from her calling. She’d go to jail. She’d take her entire presidency with her. Bishop Sylvester would be very disappointed.

  She finished the batter and put the muffin tin in the oven. Everyone would wonder what on earth had happened to her. Her children would be so ashamed.

  At that, she started to laugh. Her children hardly ever thought of her as it was. Neither of them had been to see her in years—maybe it would be good for them to worry about her for a while, instead of the other way around.

  Chapter Five

  “Aunt Ida Mae?”

  Ida Mae put down her feather duster and walked toward the sound of Ren’s voice. She found him in the garage, taking some of his equipment out of his car and placing it on a shelf.

  “What is it?” she asked when she saw the look of concern on his face.

  “Well, you know the Dunns?” he asked, as if she hadn’t had them on her mind every minute of every day—well, practically—since the starving baby scare the week before.