The Truth According to Us (43 page)

Jottie's birthday was on Friday, so on Thursday, Minerva and Mae and Bird and I locked ourselves into the kitchen to make her a cake. The problem was that Jottie was the only one who could cook. Mae and Minerva smoked about fifty cigarettes apiece and pored over an old yellow clipping from a newspaper. Bird and I ran around pulling ingredients from the cupboards.

“Mix dry ingredients,” read Mae. “With what?”

Miss Beck came in after a while, but she didn't know any more than we did. She said she thought we ought to turn on the oven, but Mae said it was so hot she was going to wait till the last minute.

It looked all right when we put it in, but something happened to it in the oven. The recipe said it would be “airy,” but I don't think they meant it the way it came out. Minerva and Mae and Bird and I looked at the thing in the pan and Bird said, “Jottie likes ice cream better than she does cake, anyway,” and Minerva and Mae busted up laughing. Then Jottie shouted through the kitchen door that we weren't going to get any dinner if we didn't let her in soon, and we decided that Minerva would give Bird and me money to go buy ice cream for Jottie at Statler's the next afternoon. Mae and Minerva would both be off at their own houses by then, but they said we were big girls and they
trusted us not to run off and squander the money on chorus boys. Then they smoked about fifty more cigarettes and criticized the way Bird and I washed the dishes.

The next morning when I got out of bed, it was already hot, so hot and thick that there wasn't enough air to breathe. And it was still. I guess the birds were too hot to get up to much singing. It made me feel bad for Jottie that the birds weren't singing on her birthday, so I sang “Whistle While You Work” as I came downstairs. I could do the whistling parts, too. Jottie said I was an infant phenom.

It was still real early. Jottie had pulled the shades against the heat, but it came streaming in anyway, and the kitchen turned bright yellow, so you would have thought the world was on fire outside the shades. Jottie poured me some cereal and sat down to keep me company while I ate. I couldn't imagine how she drank coffee when it was so hot.

After a while, the others came along: first Bird, who kissed Jottie's cheek and said she felt sorry for grown-ups because nobody cared about their birthdays, and then Mae and Minerva, who yawned and sang Happy Birthday while they drank their coffee. Father was away on business; he'd left the night Jottie told about Bastille Day, after we'd gone to bed. Bird and I listened to everyone moan about the heat until we couldn't wait one more second and then we brought out the locket, all wrapped up in red tissue paper. Jottie said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life and she put it right on, even though she was going to have to take it off again to put in our pictures. She said she knew exactly which pictures she was going to use, and then she hugged us all. Bird muttered a little about lounging pajamas, but even Bird could see that Jottie liked the locket. Miss Beck came in then, and she wished Jottie a happy birthday, too. She even gave her a present, a handkerchief with a rose on it, which was nice, I suppose.

We fussed over Jottie a while longer, and then the real day had to begin. Minerva went to take a bath, and Jottie poured cereal for Bird and Miss Beck. Henry put his head in the back door and said it was going to get up to one hundred and two degrees later in the afternoon.
He'd read it in the paper, he said, along with a story about cows dying of sunstroke. He looked at Jottie. “Many happy returns of the day,” he said, and then he got mad when we laughed.

After he'd stomped off, Mae lit her first cigarette. “This had just better be the hottest day of the year.”

“Or what?” I asked.

“Or I quit,” said Mae.

—

Bird and I hunkered down inside the house all morning, putting off the moment when we'd get hot for keeps. As long as we stayed in the dark and didn't move, we wouldn't come right out and sweat. We went into my grandmother's sewing room—I don't think I had ever before spent more than five minutes there—and lay on the floor. Then we tried the old dead parlor, full of black furniture and dust. It was cooler than the rest of the house, and when I put my cheek down on a little marble-top table, I had a solitary second of cold against my skin. Bird stretched out on the horsehair sofa, to see how long she could stand it without scratching. She said she lasted a minute, but she didn't.

We weren't sweating, but we got awful bored, so after lunch we went down the street to see what the Lloyd boys were doing. We were hoping it was something pertaining to a hose, but no such luck. They were digging a grave, Jun and Frank and Dex were. They were going to bury their baby brother, Neddie, alive. It made me pant to look at them, digging away in the stomped-over grass, heaving up big clumps of dirt. Not Bird. She thought it was wonderful, and she offered to be their sample, while I threw myself down in the pitiful shade of their beat-up old maple tree. I looked up through the branches and saw not one leaf stirring. Not one. The sky behind the leaves was whitish gray, like hot metal, and every colored thing had turned pale.

Bird skipped over, drenched in sweat. “Jun says he'll bury me alive!” She was thrilled.

Jun lifted his head and smiled at me.

“You're joking, aren't you?” I asked him.

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head and scraped up another chunk of dirt.

I sighed and got to my feet, feeling drops trickle down my back. It was too hot to fight. “Jun Lloyd, don't you dare. She'll die of suffocation,” I said.

“Oh,
Willa
,
”
said Bird. “Stop picking on us.”

Jun was twelve, like me, but he was big. He'd probably give me a black eye. My only hope was maybe his father had said he couldn't hit a girl.

“He gave me a glass straw to breathe through,” Bird said. She held it up. “See?”

Oh.

For a minute I watched the boys' shoulders move up and down, turning dirt. They were enjoying themselves, even if it was a million degrees. And Bird, too. She was skittering around the hole, pointing out rocks they needed to remove so she could lie easy in her grave. They were all happy as could be, and it seemed like they were on one side of a window and I was on the other. I thought about it, there under the tree. Maybe this was what came of all the sneaking and spying I'd done. Maybe I was permanently a spy.

“Don't kill her, now,” I said over my shoulder as I trudged back down the lawn. I walked slowly home. Inside it would be dark and still, and I'd be able to hear the afternoon ratchet forward on the clock's metal wheels. I clicked open the door quietly, so as not to disturb Jottie's sacred resting time. She was in her pink chair, eyes closed, one hand on a book in her lap. I tiptoed by so quietly she didn't even stir.

In the kitchen, I put my head in the refrigerator, and, since I was there anyway, I popped three ice cubes into my mouth. When I closed the door and turned away, I saw the money under the sugar bowl. A lot this time. Almost what you'd call a stack. I was happy then. Father was home, sleeping. And Jottie was sleeping, too. In all the house, I was the only one awake, watching over them.

Then the telephone rang.

Jottie bolted upright in terror.

Oh. The telephone.

She was still panting when she answered. “Hello?”

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

“Who's this?” she asked dazedly.

“It's me, Sol,” he said. “Were you asleep?” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“No,” she said. “Not me.”

“You sound kind of sleepy.”

“You calling me lazy?”

“Jottie. It's your birthday.”

“How'd you find out?”

“I remembered.”

“Really?”

“All these years, I always remembered, but this is the first time I've been able to do something about it. Happy birthday.”

“Thank you.” She closed her eyes, picturing him. “Where are you?”

“What? My study.”

“You have a
study?”
Her eyes flew open in amazement.

“Well. Yeah. You remember the house. Don't you?”

Oh. His father's study. But still. Sol, in a study.

“Listen, Jottie—”

“You don't smoke a pipe, do you?” she asked suspiciously.

He sighed. “Jottie, listen. I got an idea. About you and me going on an—an excursion. For your birthday.”

“An excursion?”

“A trip.”

“A trip?” What was he talking about?

“I thought we could—maybe—go to Charles Town. The Horse Show is on, and I remembered how you used to like going to the races. Do you still?” he asked anxiously.

Jottie laughed. “The Horse Show! I haven't been in
years.”
He'd remembered what she'd liked. He'd remembered and he'd planned for
her. Sol was wonderful. And Felix was away. The mice will play, she noted, and admired her pun. Serves him right, anyway, she added, thinking of their last conversation. To hell with him. She could go. It was her birthday, after all—

Sol interrupted her thoughts. “I thought we could make it a real vacation. We could go out to supper and even spend the night, I was thinking. So I made us reservations at the Jefferson Hotel. Separate rooms, of course.” He stammered a little and took a breath. “It's a real nice hotel, and I thought we could—have fun. Together.”

She said nothing. He was going to propose again. She'd be ready this time. This time, it wouldn't hurt. She wouldn't think of Vause. Vause was a liar, and she wouldn't think of him. This time, she would think of Sol and be happy.

“Jottie?”

“Sol,” she said softly, “it's real nice of you. I'd be glad to go.”

“Really?” he asked, his voice pitching sharply upward.

The image of Felix came rushing toward her, but she pushed him away indignantly. What right did he have to tell her what she could and couldn't do? None. Sol had lied—not even lied, been mistaken—
once
. Felix had lied to every woman he ever met. “Really.”