by Lois Duncan
“What was it you saw, Tam?” her father asked her gently.
“A bleeding candle. That’s pretty dumb, isn’t it? It doesn’t mean anything. One of the candles of sisterhood had blood running down the side of it. Does that sound crazy?”
“It doesn’t sound crazy, dear,” her mother said. “We’ve all accepted for a long time the fact that you do seem to have a greater sensitivity than most people. You’ve startled us at times with some of these odd visions that materialize and predictions that really come true. The thing is, though, there are other times when they turn out to be false alarms. Right?”
“Yes,” Tammy said. “There have been times like that.”
“Don’t you think this could’ve been one of them?”
“Yes.” She wanted to believe it so much that she said it again, trying to convince herself. “Yes, it could’ve been. Like I said, nothing has happened.”
“You can’t let these feelings of yours control your life, honey,” her mother said. “You have to use your common sense. What sort of awful thing is going to happen at a club meeting in the middle of the afternoon?”
“The roof might fall in on us, I guess.” Tammy giggled, faced with the absurdity of the statement. “You think I should go back, then?”
“I certainly do, dear, if it’s making you so unhappy. If anyone brings out a bleeding candle you can always leave.” Her mother was teasing her.
Tammy turned to her father.
“You think so, too, Dad?”
“I think the decision should be yours, Tam,” Mr. Carncross said quietly. Unlike his wife, he wasn’t smiling.
Chapter 7
“Is something bugging you tonight? You’re awfully quiet.” Mr. Grange glanced across the top of his paper at the woman on the sofa. “You hardly talked during dinner. Do you have one of your headaches?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’ve just been thinking.”
Edna Grange was a small woman with a short, flat nose like her daughter’s and a tired, soft face. As a girl, she, like Kristy, had always looked younger than her years. Now, at thirty-seven, she looked closer to her mid-forties. Sometimes in the mornings as she hurriedly applied makeup before leaving for work, she had the odd feeling that she was decorating the face of a stranger.
Now she became aware of that stranger’s voice, dull and apathetic. “I’m sorry.” Why in the world had she said that? What was it she was apologizing for? “I’ve been thinking,” she repeated.
“What?” Her husband, who’d returned his attention to the paper, looked up again in surprise. “What did you say?”
“I was thinking about tonight—that party at the Underwoods’. We should’ve let Kristy go.”
“Oh, Edna, don’t tell me we’re back on that again,” Mr. Grange said irritably. “What are you trying to do, encourage her in this rebellion? It’s been a whole week now since she made that defiant announcement of hers, and she’s just as stubborn as she was in the beginning.”
“But is it going to help anything to keep her home every evening?” his wife asked. “Like you say, it’s been a week. What are we accomplishing?”
“She can reverse things anytime she wants to. All she has to do is give up that club and start helping out around here the way she’s supposed to.”
“She does help, George. A lot, really,” Mrs. Grange said. “It’s not as if she was asking for every afternoon free. One day a week doesn’t seem unreasonable when you think about all the freedom the boys have.”
“Don’t you remember our first talk about this subject? It won’t be one afternoon. You made that point yourself. These school sororities take up all kinds of time other than just for meetings.”
“We could probably work around them somehow. Maybe most of them would take place on evenings or weekends, or maybe there wouldn’t really be all that many. I was upset that evening. I overreacted.”
“My god, Edna, what’s gotten into you?” her husband asked in bewilderment. “You’re the one suffering because of Kristy’s defiance. You come home Mondays to a wall-to-wall mess and have to start putting together some sort of supper, and you’ve told me yourself you worry all afternoon about what sort of trouble Eric’s got himself into at home by himself. All I’ve tried to do is back you up on this and get Kristy to come around and shape up.”
“I know.”
She did know that he was trying to help her, to get things under control again so she wouldn’t be overburdened. That first night, she’d been grateful for his support. And that evening a few days later, when Kristy had stood before them, her jaw set, her freckles standing out in a pattern of dark dots against her pale face, grounding her had seemed to be the only alternative.
“I’m not giving up my membership,” Kristy had stated flatly. “I’m attending Monday meetings. I’m sorry to upset you, Mom, but that’s just the way it’s going to be.”
You couldn’t let a child say something like that, could you?
Or—could you?
I never said anything like that to my parents, Edna Grange thought. I never said anything like that to anybody. How could she have the nerve? That bothered her almost as much as the proclamation itself, because it was so out of character. Kristy had never been a defiant child. Niles, yes—Niles had always defied authority; they had come to accept that as part of his personality. And Peter, being the first and so uncommonly beautiful, had been able to get his way by smiling at them. Kristy sulked and grumbled; that was her method of dealing with adversity. But during the past week, Kristy hadn’t been sulking. She’d come straight home from school four days in the week, picked things up and done the laundry with a seemingly pleasant attitude; she sat with them at the dinner table, cleaned up the kitchen and retired without a complaint to her bedroom with an armload of schoolbooks. And on Monday afternoon, she didn’t come home till dinner.
It was driving George crazy, but Edna herself was beginning to be amused by it. To see Kristy, funny, meek little Kristy, holding her own like this was such a new experience, you had to pause and give the situation another mental run-through.
“I’m beginning to wonder if she might not have a legitimate gripe,” Mrs. Grange said now, letting the words slide tentatively into the space between them. “She did try to talk to us about her side of this, and we wouldn’t listen to her. Maybe taking this stand was the only way she could find to get through to us.”
“She’s gotten through, all right,” George Grange said. “She’s got me so mad I’m ready to disown her. She knows perfectly well what the situation is around here, and she has her responsibilities as part of this family.”
“And the boys don’t?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“What Kristy said was true, George; Peter and Niles don’t lift a hand to help out. She was right when she said that it isn’t fair. It’s not fair.”
“What’s unfair about it?” Mr. Grange asked impatiently. “Pete and Niles are boys. You can’t expect them to put on aprons and flit around polishing the furniture. I didn’t do that when I was a boy, and god help anybody who suggested it to me.”
“They wouldn’t have to do anything like that,” Mrs. Grange said. “They could simply take turns staying home on Monday afternoons to keep an eye on Eric and pick up the house a little. And it wouldn’t be impossible for them to put a meal together either. Plenty of professional chefs are men, aren’t they?”
“Sure, and what else are they?”
“Come on, there’s nothing especially feminine about chopping up salad greens. Besides, when you think about it, the whole reason I’m working so many extra hours is to add to their college funds.”
“Look, it’s been a long week. We’re both tired. This is a silly argument.” Her husband’s voice had settled into that solid, reasonable tone that she knew so well and liked so little. It made her feel diminished somehow, childish, as though nothing she said was of any value—yet at the same time it contained affection. There’d never been a moment in th
e duration of their marriage that she’d doubted George’s love for her, and that, in a way, made everything harder. You couldn’t resent someone who loved you, could you? Not unless there was something wrong with your value system.
Yet tonight she did resent him. There was no other word for the way she was feeling as she sat listening to that familiar, self-assured voice.
“Men are men, and women are women,” George Grange was saying firmly. “Both have their places in the world. When you try to shift things around and change those places, you get yourself a lot of mixed-up people who don’t know what they are.
“I went to a bar in Vegas, Eddie, back when I was in the service. You know what they had there? Guys dressed up like women. I mean, they looked just like women, with boobs and their hair all puffed up on top of their heads, and there was one of them who sang like a woman. He sang ‘Over the Rainbow,’ and, my god, he sounded exactly like Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. I thought right then, if there’s ever a time when I have sons and one of them turns out like that… well, can you imagine how their parents must feel?”
“You think their parents were responsible?” Despite herself, she was affected by the picture he had drawn for her. “From what I’ve read, some people think it’s genetic, just like being left-handed or having freckles.”
“Maybe so, but if those guys had been raised right they wouldn’t have been out there flaunting themselves that way, like they were proud of being freaks. We’re lucky to have two real men in Pete and Niles. Let’s be grateful, huh? Let’s enjoy them for what they are.”
As always happened when they argued, she’d gotten nowhere. Everything George said was logical to himself. She couldn’t refute it. She knew she was blessed to have married such a good and stable man, and she shouldn’t focus on his faults. When she thought back on the era between her high-school graduation and her marriage, it returned to her, not as a series of individual days, but as a great, gray cloud of time in which she hung motionless, suspended between childhood and adulthood. Waiting for George to get out of the army, she’d lived at home with her parents. She’d made herself as useful as possible, helping her mother with the gardening and canning, and babysitting for neighbors in the evenings. She’d read a lot, and taken long walks along the edge of the creek, and written George letters once and sometimes twice a day, and marked off on a calendar she kept beside her bed the slow passage of the days and weeks and months that would bring her finally to a moment of self-identity when she would become Mrs. George Grange.
“How about some coffee?” her husband said now. His eyes were back on the newspaper.
“It’s on, and the cups are in the drying rack.”
“I didn’t ask you where it was. I said, how about some?”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Edna Grange got to her feet and went into the kitchen and poured his coffee. She put milk and sugar in it, gave it a stir, and carried the mug into the living room and set it on a TV tray beside his chair.
Then she went upstairs and stood outside her daughter’s closed bedroom door. From behind it she could hear Kristy’s radio playing softly; it was bluegrass, rich and earthy with a strong melody line, a far cry from the hard rock that usually blared from the stereo in the boys’ room. Edna herself played bluegrass on those few occasions when she was alone in the house and there was no one to scoff at her taste.
She reached out her hand and rapped lightly.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Mom.” She turned the knob and opened the door.
Kristy was sitting in bed, reading. She glanced up quickly, her face apprehensive.
“You want something, Mom?”
“Get dressed,” Edna Grange said. “And pack up some overnight stuff. I’m driving you over to Holly’s party.”
“It’s me, honey. May I come in?”
“Sure, Mom,” Laura said. “The door’s not locked.”
She was seated at the dressing table, and in the mirror she watched the bedroom door open and her mother’s cumbersome bulk appear.
Mrs. Snow’s eyes also focused upon the mirror images, and she gave a little gasp of delight.
“Honey, you look just beautiful!”
“Do you like my hair this way?” Laura asked nervously, fingering the cluster of curls she’d worked over so laboriously for most of the afternoon and had now fastened to the top of her head.
“It’s lovely,” her mother told her. “You look just like a movie star. Are you wearing mascara? Is that why your eyes look so shiny? I wish I had a camera with me this very minute to take your picture.”
“I’ve got some eye makeup on,” Laura said. “I’ve got foundation, too. I read this magazine article about how to apply a couple of different shades and blend them together. It’s supposed to make your face look narrow.”
“You little silly!” Mrs. Snow came into the room and stood behind her daughter, stooping so that their faces showed side by side in the reflecting glass. “Two peas in a pod. That’s what Papa used to call us when you were little.”
“He did?” Laura stared without expression at the undeniable likeness. Even with the darker shade of foundation along the sides of her face and under the chin, the contours didn’t seem to be greatly diminished. “About Papa—I’ve been meaning to ask you—am I supposed to go see him this Christmas?”
“At Christmas?” her mother said vaguely. “My goodness, honey, I don’t know. Why worry about something like that right now?”
“Christmas is only two months away,” Laura said. “That’s pretty close. And doesn’t the custody agreement say that I’m supposed to spend vacations with him? I didn’t last summer.”
“You had that terrible virus. They were afraid for you to expose the baby.”
“It was only a summer cold,” Laura said. “It didn’t last very long.”
“You really want to leave your mama all alone during the holidays?”
There was no answer for such a question.
“It’s just that I haven’t seen Papa for such a long time. It’s been over a year now.” She dropped the subject. “You really do like my hair?”
“It’s as good as Mrs. Brummell could do at the salon,” Mrs. Snow said admiringly, reaching a finger to touch the curls. “Do you know what would be fun for you to do tonight? You could do the hair of all the girls at the party. That’s what we always used to do at slumber parties when I was a girl. We’d sit up all night giggling and talking and giving each other makeovers.”
“It’s not a slumber party, Mom.”
“It’s not?” Mrs. Snow said in surprise. “I thought it said that on the invitation.”
“It did,” Laura told her, “but Holly decided to change it. She told me yesterday. It’s going to go pretty late, but we won’t be sleeping over. They don’t have enough beds, or something.”
“Then you’ll want me to pick you up?”
“No, just take your pill like always and go to sleep. Mr. Underwood is going to drive us all home when the party’s over.” Laura shoved her chair back slowly so as to allow her mother an opportunity to move out from behind it. “In fact, I’ve got a ride over, too, with one of the girls. She’s going to pick me up out in front in a couple of minutes. So you don’t have to do a thing except wish me a nice time.”
“You’ll have one, I know,” her mother said confidently. “I just wish there were going to be boys there to see how pretty you look.”
Laura turned to press a kiss on the smooth, pink cheek and then, impulsively, threw her arms around her mother’s plump shoulders in a spontaneous hug.
I wish that I could tell her, she thought regretfully. She’d be so happy for me.
But she’d promised.
“I don’t want a bunch of people talking about us,” Peter had told her. “That club of yours is a bunch of gossip fiends. That’s one reason I broke it off with Madison; she was always telling everybody everything we did together. I like my privacy, you know?”
“I know,” Lau
ra had answered breathlessly. “I’m kind of a private person, too.”
She’d pleaded sick when she called Holly to back out of the slumber party. It had been a lie then, but now it was close to the truth. Her face felt feverish and her stomach churned with nauseous growling sounds, and her heart was beating so hard that she was afraid she might faint. There were other worries, too—that the Daughters of Eve might call tonight to ask how she was; that her mother might wait up for her and see she’d lied about who was bringing her home—but if those things happened, she’d have to deal with them later.
Right now the important thing was to get herself over to the corner of Locust and Second streets for her date with Peter Grange.
Ann Whitten’s cell phone rang just as she was going out the door.
For a moment she was tempted not to answer it. They were late already because Kelly had to wait for her father to come home with the car. Now she was parked in the driveway with the engine running, beeping the horn in a “hurry, get out here” manner, and over at the Underwoods’ they were probably waiting on them to start dinner and growing more impatient by the minute.
Still, there was always the possibility that the phone call was important. Her parents had gone into town to an early movie, and with her father’s health the way it was, something could’ve happened.
“Hang on a sec!” she yelled to Kelly, and pulled her phone out of her bag and answered without looking at the screen.
“Hello?”
For a moment there was only silence. Then Dave’s voice asked huskily, “Annie?”
“Yes, it’s me.” He must have switched the position of the mouthpiece, because suddenly she could hear his breathing, harsh and ragged, and a cord of fear twisted somewhere deep in her stomach. “Dave, is something wrong?”
“Yes.” There was silence again, and then a strange, choking sound, and she realized to her horror that he was crying.
“What is it?” Ann demanded. “What’s happened? Dave, are you okay?”
