The Big Shuffle

by Laura Pedersen

  Bernard leans over and whispers, “If you can't be a winner, then at least be a martyr.”

  We survive this receiving line of mourners and eventually they head out, passing Eric at the front door; he shakes all the men's hands and politely hugs the women. Louise must have gone straight up to her room. I haven't seen her since we arrived back from the graveyard. And knowing her aversion to providing unpaid child care, it's doubtful she went to the basement with all the kids.

  Bernard and Gil not only help clean up and rinse all the glasses, but also put the kids to bed. We decide that even though tomorrow is Friday, they should probably go back to school. Sitting at home for another day isn't going to do any good, and it will be easier for me to get organized with them out of my hair for a few hours. As Bernard keeps reminding me, all these flowers and fruit baskets will require thank-you notes. It's too bad there's no way to exchange them for diapers and lunch meat. I'd definitely be more enthusiastic about the thank-you notes.

  By the time I lie down on the couch it must be very late. Yet I don't bother to look at the grandfather clock directly across from me. Time no longer matters. It's as if all the hours on the clock have been painted over, leaving it blank, with the hands going round and round, indicating nothing.

  Eventually I drift off from sheer exhaustion, only to be awakened by a nightmare in which I can't remember what Dad looks like. I turn on the light and locate the photo of Mom and Dad from the mantel and put it next to me on the end table. Staring intently at Dad's face, I try to recall everything about him—what he wore, how he smelled, his favorite foods, the way he picked us up and carried us over his big strong shoulders when we were tired. I burn these images into my mind so that I won't ever forget.

  TWENTY

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I WAKE UP AT EXACTLY HALF PAST five. This is amazing because in school at least two alarm clocks were necessary if I had to rise before seven. My grand plan is to get Davy, Darlene, and Francie ready before the twins wake up. Lillian is almost two and I have no idea what Mom does with her all day long, aside from try to prevent her from ruining the house and ingesting small pieces of plastic along the way. She is into absolutely everything!

  First I go to the kitchen and make the lunches. Then I put cereal and milk on the table. The days of everyone having what they like for breakfast are over. Anyway, Dad always said it was ridiculous for Mom to make four different things and that kids should eat what's put in front of them or not eat at all.

  By the time I head upstairs to wake those children targeted for the school bus, Eric emerges from the basement, where he and Uncle Lenny are sleeping on couches. I can hear Aunt Lala running water in the downstairs bathroom. Eric is driving Aunt Lala and Uncle Lenny over to visit Mom at Dalewood, and then I'm supposed to go in the afternoon.

  In the small room at the end of the upstairs hallway, Teddy and Davy share bunk beds. On the top bunk Teddy is still sound asleep, completely wrapped up in a tan velour blanket and looking remarkably like a giant caterpillar.

  Shaking Davy awake, I can't tell if his red hair has paint or glue clumping it together, and there are some new freckles on his face that could be dirt or possibly Magic Marker.

  “Hey, mister, when was the last time you had a bath?”

  His eyelids flip open just as I notice the unusual map on the wall next to his place in the lower bunk bed. “What is this on your wall?”

  “A map,” he says.

  “I can see that. What is it made out of?”

  “Gummy bears,” he replies, as if only an idiot wouldn't know this.

  “But they're stuck directly onto the wall—has Mom seen this?”

  Davy blinks his bright green eyes at me several times as if any and all knowledge of the English language has suddenly escaped him.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Take a shower and get dressed for school.”

  As I give this order the water across the hall goes on and someone else has grabbed the shower.

  I change the order. “Go eat breakfast and then come back up and take a shower. You're filthy!”

  “Hallie,” says Davy.

  Uh-oh, I think. Here it comes—the stomachache, sore throat, whatever. Davy will use any excuse not to be on that bus.

  “What, sweetie?”

  “My throat hurts,” comes the faint reply.

  “I'll write your teacher a note saying that you should sit out recess.” I'd learned this one from Mom.

  Next on my list is Francie, who shares a room with Lillian. With the birth of the twins Lillian was transitioned slightly early to a “big girl” bed, much to her delight. Francie's already up and sprawled out on the floor playing with her dolls. Though she treats them more like stunt dolls than babies or playmates. Instead of having tea parties or playing house, they have to jump off the bed into a bucket full of water or else leap through orange-colored paper rings of imaginary fire. At least the fire is supposed to be imaginary. Most of them don't have hair because of the one day it wasn't.

  “When was the last time you had a bath?” I ask.

  “Yesterday before we got all dressed up.”

  She looks clean enough. “Okay, then put some clothes on and go downstairs for breakfast.”

  “Don't want to go to school,” she announces while placing her dolls all in row, facing forward, which could either be to receive Olympic medals or face a firing squad.

  “Why not?” I decide to take a stab at being a child psychologist. If she's still upset from the funeral, then I guess it won't hurt to stay home another day.

  “Because I hate Randy Perkins,” says Francie. “He stoled my Black Beauty.”

  I don't know if she's talking about a book or a plastic horse. It's definitely not a lunch box. The Palmers are strictly a brown paper bag family.

  “Tell him to give it back and if that doesn't work then ask the teacher to talk to him.” I pull open a drawer and dig around for pants and a sweater, but all that's in there are a bunch of T-shirts and mismatched pajama tops and bottoms.

  “I'm going to beat him up!” declares Francie.

  “No, you're not,” I say in my best Mom voice while checking the closet for something wearable. When I was home for Christmas, Mom told me that Francie has already been in two fights with boys this year. “Francie, where are your school clothes?”

  “Dunno.”

  I'd better check the laundry room. As soon as I'm out in the hallway the twins start the dawn chorus from down below. I quickly poke my head into Darlene and Louise's room. Louise is lying in bed facing the wall with the cordless phone pressed to her ear.

  “Who are you talking to at six-thirty in the morning?” I ask. As if I don't know.

  Louise turns her head enough to give me a none-of-your-business scowl before returning to her conversation.

  I gently shake Darlene, who will probably go down in history as the obedient Palmer child. “Hey, Super Girl, it's time to get ready for school.”

  She rubs her eyes with her fists and sits up on the edge of the bed. Another set of yowls come up the staircase and both of the twins are now in full voice.

  “Check and see if you have any clean clothes to wear,” I instruct Darlene. “If not, go down and have breakfast in your pajamas while I get stuff from the laundry room.”

  Just then the doorbell rings.

  “Louise, could you please bring some clothes up from the laundry room while I answer the door and change the twins?”

  Louise covers the mouthpiece of the phone and angrily hisses back, “You're not my mother, you know. You can't tell me what to do!”

  The doorbell rings again. Eric yells from the bathroom, “Somebody's at the door!”

  “I'm not trying to tell you what to do,” I say to Louise, though my voice is also rising and developing an edge to it. “I'm simply asking for a little help here. If you'd rather answer the door and change the twins, then fine.”

  Louise turns away from me to face the wall and resumes her phone chat.

&
nbsp; The twins are now bawling as if nobody has fed them for a week.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WITHOUT LOOKING THROUGH THE SIDE WINDOW TO SEE WHO IT is, I throw open the front door. A guy in a suit is standing there with an envelope in his hand. He looks like a salesman.

  “Hi, I'm Burt.” The man shifts his weight from one foot to the other while fixing his gaze squarely on the welcome mat. “I work for your dad—I mean, I worked for your dad….” He becomes flustered and the sentence trails off.

  “I'm Hallie.” I usher him into the front hall. “You were at the funeral yesterday, right—in the back?”

  “Yep. Sure was a big crowd!” Burt says this as if it speaks well for the family.

  In the background only one of the twins is yowling, which means Aunt Lala must have picked up the other one. However, the sound of a shrieking child appears to discombobulate Burt, and he recognizes that it's not really a convenient time to be having a chat.

  “Sorry to come by so early, but I was on my way to work and saw the lights on,” he explains abruptly and then shoves the envelope toward me. “Uh, we took up a collection at work. I wish it was more, but … well …”

  “Oh!” I take the envelope from him only because I have no choice—he's abandoning it in midair. My head is telling me to say thanks, but we don't need any charity. Burt appears even more uncomfortable as the one assigned to bestow the gift. He's halfway down the steps by the time I've lowered my hand back down to my side. “Okay then,” he yells over his shoulder. “Call if you need anything, absolutely anything at all.” He practically runs back to a car that is idling by the curb.

  Tossing the envelope onto the sideboard, I hurry to fetch the twins.

  Uncle Lenny appears all dressed and ready to go. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” I offer.

  “A couple of apples are just fine if you have them.”

  “In the dining room,” I say. Lord knows, we have enough fruit to feed the entire monkey house at the Cleveland Zoo. The little kids continue to be somewhat wary of Uncle Lenny, as if he's the dark at the bottom of the stairs. I can't exactly blame them. His deep bass voice rumbles up from the bottom of his barrel chest and emerges through a froth of white whiskers like a cannon going off. When I was having a hard time getting the kids into bed last night, Uncle Lenny loudly declared that he'd kick them in the backsides so hard that their spines would come out through the tops of their heads. They scooted off to bed lickety-split.

  At long last Darlene, Davy, and Francie are on their way to school, and Eric leaves to see Mom with Aunt Lala and Uncle Lenny. After lunch Eric will watch the kids while I visit Mom. He has to catch a bus at four o'clock so he can play in a championship football game tomorrow.

  Teddy races through the living room and out the front door to catch up with Eric. I grab a coat out of the front hall that looks to be about the right size and dash out after him.

  “I'm not sure they're going to let you in, Teddy.” I toss the coat into the backseat where he's sitting next to Aunt Lala.

  Eric rolls down the front window. “Then he'll have to stay in the waiting room. On the way home I'll drop him at school.”

  Back inside Lillian is chewing on green cellophane from one of the fruit baskets. I haul the old playpen up from the basement. Then I run a bath for the twins. It's when we're finished that I spot the little blue ribbon that had been tied around Roddy's ankle lying near the drain. I quickly look over at the naked babies crawling on the big towel spread out on the floor. Oh no! They look exactly alike.

  Louise opens the bathroom door. She's wearing a coat and scarf. “Just thought I'd say good-bye.”

  “Okay,” I say. “See you later.”

  “I left Brandt's number on the kitchen counter.”

  “Brandt? You're going to visit him in Massachusetts? Now?”

  “I'm moving there. We're going to live together.”

  “You're what!” I shout. “No way!”

  “You left home when you were fifteen,” says Louise.

  “That was different.” Only it was and it wasn't. I try another tactic. “Mom will kill you!”

  “Mom is gone,” she says as she walks away, no longer sounding angry, but more like a robot.

  I finish dressing the twins just in time to see a cab pull up and Louise heading out with two stuffed garbage bags, the customary Palmer luggage set. I follow her with an unknown twin in each arm. Lillian has by now managed to throw every toy out of her playpen and is demanding that I fetch them for her.

  Louise opens the front door and I stand there speechless. What am I supposed to say—that she can't leave me in this situation, what about school, what about money? Then I truly will be acting like Mom and Dad and her actions will be even more justified. Besides, I don't completely blame her for generating an exit strategy. Deep down I realize that if I had an out I just might take it, too.

  Only Louise can get away with this. It's hard to explain, but because she's beautiful, it's as if her good looks make her extremely fragile, to the point they're actually some sort of a handicap, and thus people act as if she needs extra help to navigate the world. Whereas the more plain-faced among us are always expected to be strong and to sacrifice.

  This has always been the case, at least in our house. If Louise didn't want to eat dinner or attend a skating lesson, it was fine. If the rest of us tried to wriggle out of something, we heard about wasted money and the need to “start what we finish.” If you were ever to point out this child-rearing protocol discrepancy to my parents, they'd completely deny it. I suppose it's true what they say: that every child is born into a different house.

  As the taxi pulls out of the driveway and speeds down the street the red taillights become smaller. A light snow begins to fall and low dark clouds move quickly toward us from the west, another storm on the way. It crosses my mind that luck is a lot like the weather and sometimes for no apparent reason it turns really bad.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE LAUNDRY ROOM IS IN THE BACK CORNER OF THE BASEMENT, A dimly lit concrete bunker with piles of clothes reaching almost to the ceiling, and particularly attractive to spiders of the daddylonglegs variety.

  Mom has a system where she washes about three loads every day, from six different categories—baby clothes, boys’ coloreds, boys’ whites, girls’ coloreds, girls’ whites, and then a mishmash pile of sheets, towels, washcloths, bibs, and baby blankets. If one of the kids is sick and Mom gets a few days behind, it's almost necessary to go in there with a miner's hat and a steam shovel.

  The next three hours disappear in a flurry of cleaning, vacuuming, and throwing away decaying fruit.

  As I finish giving Lillian and the twins lunch, Eric returns home from the hospital with Aunt Lala and Uncle Lenny. “Did you give Teddy some lunch money? After you left I realized he didn't have anything to eat.”

  “He stayed at the hospital,” says Eric. “We agreed that he'd come home with you. There's a cafeteria and some vending machines.”

  “Is Mom better?” I ask hopefully Though better than what

  I'm not exactly sure. I haven't seen her since leaving for school at the beginning of the year.

  “Still the same,” says Eric. “She doesn't respond. I mean, I know that she sees us, and I'm pretty sure she recognizes us, but she doesn't say anything.”

  “Then what is Teddy wanting to stay there for?”

  “To be honest, it's a good thing he came along,” says Eric. “After the first ten minutes of trying to pretend that everything is fine, the rest of us ran out of steam and sat there in silence or talked with one another. But Teddy just prattles on as if Mom understands every word he's saying.”

  So much for my plan to ask Mom about the age mystery— why her birth certificate makes her two years younger than we've always believed her to be.

  “Well, the big excitement around here since you left is that Louise left for Boston. She's going to live with Brandt.” In the old days I might actually have enjoyed the sh
ock value of dropping such a bomb. But not anymore. We've had enough surprises for one week.

  “With Brandt!” shouts Eric.

  “Yes.” My voice is calm. I'm too overwhelmed to get wound up about anything.

  “And you let her just leave?”

  “What was I supposed to do? Throw Lillian's potty seat around her neck and tie her to the playpen?”

  “This is just great,” says Eric. “What about school?”

  “They have schools up there,” I state the obvious, though not in a sarcastic way.

  “What about you?” he asks. “You can't possibly manage all this by yourself.” He collapses into a kitchen chair and exhales like a bear. “That's it—I can't go back to school this afternoon!”

  I crumple into the chair across from him. “You have to go back, for a lot of reasons. If Mom doesn't get better I don't know how we're all going to afford to live past next year. The checking account is down to nothing. Ten thousand is owed to the credit union and there's forty-three thousand left to pay on the house!” I've found that suddenly I do have the energy to become agitated.

  “Well you can't take care of seven kids by yourself!” says Eric.

  There's a crash in the next room followed by the sound of glass splintering. This serves to indicate that Lillian, who tends to operate on the theory of sustained attack, has thrown a toy out of the playpen and managed to lodge a direct hit. I know right away it was the picture of Mom and Dad that I was looking at the other night and forgot to put back on the mantelpiece. Because the house is completely childproof—compliments of the children themselves—anything the least bit fragile was either broken or stored away a long time ago, except for Mom's decoupage projects. We have plenty of backups if those get ruined.