Raising Demons (32 page)

“And I must of had my sneakers on all that time, because I never had time because
she
made me do my chores and then I had to rush through dinner because—because—”

“You were going to the dance,” Jannie said, triumphant. “You got all dressed up, so
naturally
you put on shoes.”

“Hey!” Laurie swung around and gestured wildly. “I got dressed—”

“You took a shower,” I said. “I remember because—”

He shuddered. “I took a shower because
she
wouldn't let me have my good blue pants from the cleaners
unless
I took a shower.”

“No gentleman escorts a lady to a public function unless he has bathed and dressed himself in completely clean clothes,” my husband said.

“So I undressed in the bathroom because I always do and then when I went out I had this towel around me and I was carrying my clothes and the sneaker and I—”

“I saw it,” I said suddenly. “I did see it after all. I came upstairs to get two aspirin after you had finally gone to the dance and I remember the way the bathroom looked; the floor was sopping and dirty towels all over and the soap and—”

“The sneaker,” Laurie said impatiently, “keep on the subject. The sneaker, the sneaker.”

I meditated. “It was lying just inside the door and one wet towel was half on top of it. And I . . . and I . . .” I thought. “What
did
I do?”

“Think, think, think.” Laurie stood over me flapping his hands.

“Look,” I said. “I go around this house and I go around this house and I
go
around this house and I pick up shoes and socks and shirts and hats and gloves and handkerchiefs and books and toys and I always put them down again, someplace where they belong. Now when I went upstairs and saw that mess of a bathroom I had to clean up I would have taken the soap and put it in the soapdish. And I would have taken the bathmat and put it over the edge of the tub. And I would have taken the towels—”

“And put them in the hamper,” Laurie said impatiently. “We know.”

“You do? Because I have often wondered what happens all the times I say to you to put the towels—”

“Yeah, so next time I'll remember, sure. What about the
sneaker
?”

“Anyway they were wet so I couldn't put them in the hamper. I would have hung them over the shower rail to dry so
then
I could put them in the hamper. And then I would have picked up the sneaker—”

“Laurie's sneaker is weaker and creaker and cleaker and breaker and fleaker and greaker . . .” Sally wound through the study, eyes shut, chanting. Barry came behind her, doing an odd little two-step. Sally had a pail of sand and a shovel and she was making scattering motions.

“Now
wait
a minute here,” my husband began.

“It's all right,” Sally said, opening one eye. “I'm just pretending. This is only sand.”

“We're just untending,” Barry explained reassuringly. “Bleaker and sneaker and weaker and deaker.”

They filed out. My husband studied the floor morosely. “That certainly looked like magic to
me
,” he said, “and I don't
like
it. Going to have footwear popping up all over, right through the floor, probably wreck the foundations.”

“Reconstruct the scene of the crime,” Jannie said suddenly. “Because Beverley Lee Girl Detective and her girl friend Piggy, that's what
they
did. In
The Mystery of the Broken Candle
, when they had to find the missing will. They reconstructed the scene of the crime. They got everybody there and put everything the way it was—”

“Say!” Laurie looked at her admiringly. “You're charged, girl. Come on,” he said, making for the stairs, and stopped in the doorway to look compellingly at me. “Come
on
,” he said.

“And creaker and beaker and leaker and veaker.”

“Gangway, birdbait,” Laurie said. He stopped to pat his younger sister on the head. “You keep sprinkling that there magic, Perfessor. Size six and a half, white.”

“Kindly do not poke the Sally,” said Sally, drawing away stiffly.

“Unpoke, unpoke,” Barry said.

“Come
on
,” Laurie said to me. He called ahead to Jannie, “You get the towels wet and throw them on the floor. I'll get the other sneaker and when she comes we'll have it all ready.”

“You might as well take two more aspirin,” my husband said.

“I might as well,” I said.

Wearily I headed up the stairs, sand grinding underfoot. The bathroom is at the head of the stairs, and by the time I was near the top I could see that everything was prepared. Rigorously, I put my mind back three days. It is eight-thirty in the evening, I told myself. I am coming upstairs to get myself two aspirin. Laurie has just gone to the dance, I have just told him goodbye, get home early, behave yourself, be careful, do you have a clean handkerchief? Jannie is reading. Sally and Barry are asleep. It is eight-thirty Wednesday evening, I am coming to get two aspirin. I came to the top of the stairs, and sighed. The bathroom floor was sopping, the bathmat was soaked and crumpled, wet towels lay on the floor. In the corner, half under a wet towel, was one white sneaker. I asked myself through my teeth how old people had to get before they learned to pick up after themselves and after all our efforts to raise our children in a decent and clean house here they still behaved like pigs and the sooner Laurie grew up and got married and had a wife to pick up after him the better off I would be and maybe I would just take his allowance and hire a full-time nursemaid for him. I picked up the bathmat and hung it over the edge of the tub. I put the soap in the soapdish and hung the towels over the shower rail. I picked up the sneaker and resisted the temptation to slam it into the wastebasket. Then, with the sneaker in my hand, I went to the other side of the hall to the linen closet to get clean towels and a dry bathmat and Laurie and Jannie burst out of the guest room shouting, “You see? You see?”

Jannie said excitedly, “Just like Beverley Lee and it turned out it
was
the caretaker all the time.”

“Look, look,” Laurie said, pointing. I had the door of the linen closet open and I reached up onto the towel shelf and took down Jannie's Easter-egg hat.

“What?” I said, surprised.

“That's my hat,” Jannie said.

“Why would I want to put your hat in the linen closet?” I demanded. “Don't be silly.”

“My nice pink Easter-egg hat,” Jannie said, pleased.

“Craazy,” Laurie remarked. “Opens the closet and there's the hat. Craazy.” He pushed past me and began to paw through the towels.

“Ridiculous,” I said. “I
never
put hats in linen closets. Linen closets are where I keep towels and sheets and extra blankets, not hats.”

“Not sneakers, either.” Laurie stood back and dusted his hands.

“You pick up every one of those towels,” I said, annoyed. “And then you and your sister can get right in there and clean up that bathroom. And the next time I find that pink hat lying around I am going to burn it. And you can tell Beverley Lee Girl Detective—”

“Any luck?” my husband called from the foot of the stairs.

“Certainly not.” I started down. “Of all the idiotic notions and now it's too late in the year
any
way for a little hat like that.”

“Sneaker sneaker sneaker!” It was Sally and Barry, in glory. Laurie raced past me down the stairs. “Got it? Sal,” he yelled, “you
got
it?”

Proudly the little procession wound around to the front hall. Sally was still scattering sand but Barry was bearing the sneaker on high. “Gee,” Laurie said. “Hey, kids, thanks. Where was it?”

“Under your bed,” Sally said. “We did a lot of—” she glanced at her father “—blagic,” she said. “And then we went up and looked. Very good, Barry.”

“Very good, Sally,” Barry said.

“Gosh.” Laurie was pleased. He turned and gave me an affectionate pat on the head. “Boy,” he said, “are
you
ever a tippy old lady.” Then, in a burst of gratitude, he added, “I'm going to go down right now on my bike and get you kids each a popsicle.”

“Well, me, too, I should
think
,” Jannie said indignantly. “After all, it was me thought of reconstructing the crime, and in
Elsie Dinsmore
when Elsie—”

“What is this crime talk?” I said. “Anyone would think that instead of spending all my time picking up and putting away—”

“The sneaker,” Laurie said to me, gesturing. “The other sneaker. I got to get down and get those popsicles, so let's have it.”

“What?” I said.

“The sneaker, dear. The one you just had upstairs, for heaven's sake.”

Uncomfortably I looked down at my empty hands. “Now let's see,” I said. “I had it just a minute ago. . . .”

 • • • 

I was sitting at the kitchen table grating potatoes for potato pancakes and was thus a wholly captive audience when Jannie came in from school with her arithmetic and spelling books, and, of course,
Little Women
. She put the books down, hung up her jacket and hat, took an apple, and sat down at the table across from me. “I been meaning to ask you for a long time,” she said. “Suppose I wanted to write a book. Where would I begin?”

“At the beginning,” I said smartly; I had just grated my knuckle.

“I wish Laurie and Barry were girls,” she said.

“Why on earth?”

“And Sally's name was Beth.”

“Why put the whammy on Sally? Why don't
you
be Beth?”

“I'm Jo.”

“And Laurie is Meg? And poor Barry has to be Amy?”

“If they were only
girls
.”

“And does that make me Marmee? Or can I be the old cook?”

“Hannah? When
I
write
my
book—”

“I'd rather be crazy old Aunt March, come to think of it. Who do you like for Professor Bhaer?”

Jannie turned pink. “I didn't really think about that yet,” she said.

Charitably, I changed the subject. “Don't you have any homework to do?” I asked.

She sighed. “I got to write a book report,” she said. “That's why I'd like to write a book, so then I could write a book report on
that
, and save all that time.”

“I see.” Resolutely I took up the first onion and began to grate. “What I always wondered,” Jannie went on, “was when they went on the picnic in the book and they played Authors. Because in
my
game of Authors there's Louisa May Alcott and she
wrote Little Women
.” She looked at me inquiringly and I smiled bravely, tears running down my cheeks. “Well,” she said, “in her own book did they play Authors with their own book on the cards? And if Louisa May Alcott had to do a book report for school then could she—”

“I see what you mean,” I said, weeping.

She laughed. “You're crying like a fish,” she said. “Now, what I wondered, if Louisa May Alcott wrote a book. Because she had to write
that
book because it was already on the Authors cards, you see? And
Eight Cousins
and
Rose in Bloom
and
Little Men
.”

I sniffled. “
Jo's Boys
,” I said. “Don't forget
Jo's Boys
.”

“But if they were already playing Authors in the book how did they know she was going to finish it? Because suppose she got halfway and she didn't like it and threw it away how could they play Authors in the book with
Little Women
on the Authors card? Or if she changed her mind and decided to call it—”

“Suppose,” I said, “she decided to have them play pinochle? Then she wouldn't have to write
any
books.”

“But she would have to write
one
book anyway because otherwise she couldn't be in the Authors game.”

I got up and went to the sink to rinse out the grater. “But if she weren't in the Authors game—” I began and then stopped myself, shaking my head violently.

Jannie giggled. “I suppose you
did
read the book?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Then who,” Jannie asked triumphantly, “said, ‘That boy is a perfect Cyclops, isn't he'? ”

“Amy,” I said. “Who said, ‘I never enjoyed housekeeping, and I'm going to take a vacation today'?”

“Marmee, but she didn't mean it. Who said, ‘Birds in their little nests agree'?”

“Beth, on the first page.” I took down the flour. “Who said, ‘You can never get too much salt in potato pancakes'?”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother. Now go and write your book.”

 • • • 

My husband is always making little remarks about money. Sometimes he says that it doesn't grow on trees, and sometimes he says that I must think he is made of it. When he buys a Greek drachma he says that we can't take it with us, and when I take the children to get shoes for school he says in a kind of high voice that there isn't enough of it in the world for this family. I once passed the door to the dining room when he and several friends were playing poker and I heard him laughing and saying it was a shame to take it away like this. When he pays the children their allowances he says that it is a great responsibility, and whenever any of us asks him for some he says he can't afford it. However, although the discussion of money in general is a constant and urgent theme in our family, I do not think I ever heard my husband say so many different things about money as he did when the man came from the income tax department. As a matter of fact, during the twenty-odd hours between the telephone call and the man's departure I do not think my husband spent more than a second or two reflecting on any other subject.