Chapter 35: Later Sunday Morning

I shook Tara’s shoulder, committed to the usual long process of waking my sister. I was surprised when her eyes popped open suddenly and she looked up at me – clearly already awake.

“Hey, you’re awake!”

“Not really, I’m pretending,” she muttered.

“Oh, well. It’s time to pretend to get out of bed then.”

“I got woken up half an hour ago by a good deal of screaming coming through the wall.”

I grinned down at her. “Sorry about that. Liz doesn’t usually scream like that when I get in a tickle fight with her.”

“That’s because she usually wins and it’s normally you howling like a cat on heat. How did you manage to win for once?”

I grinned again. “I cheated. I had Liz all wrapped up in a sheet before I started. She couldn’t get her arms free to defend herself.”

She laughed. “Figures!”

“Anyway, our screaming in the next room wouldn’t normally wake you up.”

“I went to bed early last night. I didn’t feel like...”

“Oh! Okay!”

We looked at each other for a moment – exchanging wordless psychic messages.

I broke it by patting her thigh through the blankets and standing up. “I’m making breakfast. Bathroom’s free. It won’t be for long.” I headed towards the door. “I have to wake up The Parents soon – I think they might be a bit slow to get up this morning.”

I stopped at the door. “Oh! Liz’s father stayed the night. That means we still have a guest. So, as far as I can figure out Mum’s rules from yesterday, that means you get to wear proper clothes to breakfast and not that bathrobe.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah!”

She rolled out of bed – for the first time I realized that she was wearing one of her oversized t-shirts, obviously a concession from Mum – and crossed to her closet. She flung her closet doors open to reveal empty space. Absolutely the only thing in there was one single, small pile on a shelf. It was the outfit she’d worn last night for dinner, neatly folded and stacked.

“What do you suggest I wear?”

She folded her arm and stared into the closet. “Choices, choices, choices!”

Her words were light and joking, but underneath there was a core of anger and frustration and despair.

“Come into my room, I’ll find you some fresh underwear and you can borrow some jeans and a top.” I said it as gently as I could.

She laughed, but the laughter had that bubble of hysteria under it.

“Oh, I have underwear. Mum let me have my underwear back. Well, most of it anyway. She picked through it all and kept the stuff that was ‘unacceptable.’” Tara did the whole finger quotes thing.

“Tara, you’re not seriously blaming Mum for all this are you?”

She sighed and I could almost see all the emotion draining out of her. “No! No I’m not.” Now her voice sounded tired.

She pulled open a half-filled drawer and picked out a clean bra and pair of panties. “I’m going to get in the shower. I’d like to borrow something – anything. You pick it out. I don’t care. Choose something that would pass Mum’s inspection.”

She didn’t even look at me. She wrapped a robe around herself and walked out of the room.

The shower was running and I could hear splashing so I walked straight into the bathroom. I put my little donation of clothing on the counter next to where Tara had placed her clean underwear. I’d chosen for her my loose black jeans with little yellow and purple flowers embroidered up the front of the left leg, then I’d matched that with a slightly oversized lemon sweater that would pick up the color of the flowers on the jeans. Assuming that Mum wanted Tara in clothes that were loose and covered her up then these should qualify, plus they would look okay so Tara wouldn’t hate it too much. Also since I was wearing my blue jeans with embroidered flowers, we would look a bit like twins but not totally.

“You have some clothes!” I called at the indistinct shape moving inside the shower.

I was on my way out of the bathroom when I heard a “Hey!”

I looked back and saw Tara had stuck her head out.

“Happy Birthday! I forgot to say it before.”

I smiled at her and left the bathroom in time to catch a little dynamo wearing a Bratz t-shirt nightie and bright purple shoes. She was running down the hallway in her usual morning attempt to get to the TV before anyone could stop her. I picked her up as she ran past me and she squealed and giggled as she suddenly found herself high up in the air.

“No TV this morning, little sis. We have a guest sleeping in the living room. It’s Liz’s dad who was here for dinner last night. You better stay out of there until he’s gotten up. Would you like to help me get breakfast ready?”

Angie had pouted when I told her she couldn’t watch TV but started smiling and nodding when I asked her to help me with breakfast. Soon I had her standing on a chair with a way-too-large apron tied around her as she mixed and stirred with more enthusiasm than skill.

The only problem with that bit of genius was that then I had to stay in the kitchen and watch her until Tara came out of the shower and could be recruited. As soon as that happened, I left Tara and Angie in the kitchen and went into the living room to wake Mr D.

That was amazingly easy to do. As soon as I touched his shoulder, his snoring cut off and he was awake. I told him that the bathroom was free and that breakfast would be ready in a little while. I gave him a clean towel and a disposable razor in case he wanted to shave – that bit was a hint, he definitely needed to shave.

I knocked on Mum and Dad’s door and then pushed it open. This part wasn’t usually necessary. Most mornings they got up on their own. Even if I got up early and started cooking, it was like my cooking was a magical summoning spell that called them out of their room. This morning my magic seemed to have failed.

Mum was in the process of sitting up in bed as a result of my knocking. Her eyes looked hollow and her hair was a mess. She looked like she hadn’t slept too well. Dad didn’t move. I wasn’t sure if he was awake or not. He had his pillow pulled tightly over his head. It looked like he was trying to suffocate himself with his own pillow. Is it possible to do that? You see in movies sometimes when someone gets killed by having a pillow pushed into their face. Can you do that to yourself? I thought about rushing to Dad’s rescue but Mum didn’t seem too concerned so I stopped myself. I told them we were cooking breakfast and that it would be ready soon. I reminded them that we had to go to the police station so we had to get the day started.

Mum poked Dad with a finger and he groaned. I guess at least that meant he wasn’t completely suffocated. I backed out of the room and closed the door. Maybe he hadn’t held the pillow there long enough.

Liz came in from the back door as I returned to the kitchen. She was carrying a plastic shopping bag and a big metallic balloon that said “Happy Birthday” on one side and “3” on the other.

I saw that and started laughing. She shrugged. “I saw these balloons and thought it would be cool to get you one, but they didn’t have any with thirteen on them. If you find me a marker, I’ll put a one in front of the three. It’ll be perfect.”

I dug a black permanent marker out of a drawer and handed it to her.

“Did you get it all?”

“Yeah! The first shop was still closed but the second place you told me about had everything.” She handed me a plastic shopping bag. I peeked inside.

“These are brilliant.”

“I put your bicycle back in the garage.”

“Thanks.”

Liz tied the balloon to the back of my normal chair. I looked around the room. The banner and streamers and balloons were still in place from where my family had decorated the kitchen last night. It looked great – very party-like.

I looked at Angie who had a smudge of flour on her left cheek and her arms were coated in pancake mix.

“Tara, would you take Angie and clean her up and get her dressed.”

“Why should I? Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I’m cooking breakfast.”

“I’ll do it,” offered Liz. “It’ll be awesome fun. Come on, Angie. Let’s go get you ready.”

Liz rescued the apron from Angie and I hung it back up while she led Angie out of the room. I turned back to Tara. “Maybe you could get the ham steaks all sliced up and ready to cook. They only take a few minutes each, so everything has to be ready to go.”

Tara mumbled but got started on the ham. I talked to her while we worked. I was trying to get her to pep up a bit so she could at least pretend to be cheerful and happy at breakfast.

The Parents and Mr D. showed up in the kitchen about the same time the first ham steak hit the pan and started sizzling. I decided that the magic summoning spell must have started working again. I handed them each a mug of coffee and chased them out of the kitchen.

About ten minutes before breakfast was due to be ready, we heard a weird slapping sound come rushing down the hallway into the kitchen. The slapping sound turned out to be Angie. She was carrying Lucy and wearing a pale blue t-shirt that said “Girrrl Power” across the chest and her blue denim skirt with a double row of gold stitching that sometimes broke free of the hem and looped and swirled crazily across the fabric before returning to its place around the edges. To complete the outfit, she was wearing swimming flippers and a pair of goggles.

Tara and I grinned but we were too well trained to laugh at her. Mum had given us several lectures about that. Sometimes Angie would do weird and funny stuff deliberately to make us laugh and then laughing was okay – unless she was doing something that needed to be discouraged in which case laughing was not okay. And sometimes Angie would do weird stuff because she was three and she was exploring, in which case laughing at her was absolutely the worst thing to do because it would make her self-conscious and squash all her creativity. Mum has always been very big on not squashing creativity – I’m not complaining about that by the way.

So Tara and I were quietly grinning at each other when Liz trailed into the kitchen. She had a rueful expression on her face. I think she couldn’t figure out if she should laugh or cry. She slumped into a chair and I sent Angie out to entertain the parents.

“I have a flapper bear called Savannah,” said Liz a bit sadly. I wondered why she would be sad about that. “She’s about this tall,” holding her hands a bit more than a foot apart, “and she’s choklit brown.” I nodded, wondering where this was going. “I have about five different outfits for her, so once every few days I pick out a new outfit for her and put it on. Right now she’s wearing a claret red velvet gown with spaghetti straps and a matching red velvet headband with a feathery thing over her ear. It’s really cute.”

“Okay!” I said, still having no idea where this was going. That was okay, sometimes I had to listen for ages to follow Liz – she tended to wander off the subject all the time.

“She’s a bear, remember, not a doll. I’m obviously too old to play with dolls. Dressing up a bear is not the same thing at all.”

“Gotcha! It’s not the same,” I nodded at her with a serious expression on my face.

“Obviously,” added Tara with a touch too much sarcasm for my liking. I glared at Tara and she went back to grilling the ham steaks.

“So anyway, I figured dressing Angie couldn’t be much harder than dressing Savannah. All I had to do was pick a nice outfit and help her put it on. It sounded so easy.”

Tara and I both laughed. We didn’t laugh meanly, but we did laugh. Mum’s training about not laughing only protected Angie, not our friends – or each other. Liz pouted at us.

“You told her she couldn’t wear her purple shoes, didn’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she admitted, not sure if she was confessing to a capital crime. “They didn’t go with the outfit I’d picked.”

“And then Angie started having a meltdown,” chimed in Tara, “so you panicked because you didn’t want her to disturb everyone.”

“So what did you say? Did you offer to let her wear any shoes she wanted?” I asked.

“More or less,” admitted Liz.

“So Angie, being the little angel that she is, picked out the most outrageous thing in her closet – just to get back at you.”

Liz’s shoulders slumped. “I failed the big sister test, didn’t I?”

“Not really,” said Tara. “In fact I think it’s kind of like an initiation.”

“We’ve all fallen for it at one time or another,” I explained. “The rule is that tantrums are bad. Tantrums should never win. So you either try things that won’t cause a tantrum or stick to your guns if one starts up.”

“When Bec was little, one time we went to a concert thing back in England. It was like the characters from Sesame Street only different. Before the concert started, she threw the biggest tantrum ever because she didn’t get the same sweets everyone else was getting. Mum told her to stop and when she didn’t, Mum picked her up and carried her out of the theatre. Bec got taken all the way home and put to bed. The rest of us had to catch a taxi home after the concert.”

I rolled my eyes at Tara and Liz. There should be some rule where the stupid things you do when you were younger than say, six years old, get wiped out of your family’s memories. They should be completely erased so they can never be mentioned again – ever.

I suddenly realized that we hadn’t heard from Dan yet this morning, so I got Liz to come and take over from me. I was having fun with pancakes and stirring the apple sauce, so it took a moment to show Liz what to do before I could head down the hallway to Dan’s room.

I knocked on his door and went to open the door and stick my head in, but I stopped myself. Maybe I shouldn’t even go in his room. My hand trembled on the door handle. I didn’t know what to do. I leaned against the door and listened. I couldn’t hear anything.

I knocked again. “Dan? Dan! Breakfast is nearly ready. You have five minutes.”

I heard a muffled grunt from inside and I turned and fled.

I slid into the kitchen, put my back against the wall and closed my eyes, trying frantically to hold back the tears.

“I think this is a bad idea. Let’s not do this,” I said.

“What’s a bad idea, Bec?” That was Liz. “Cooking pancakes? Having breakfast? Going to the police? Having a birthday?”

“I don’t know, maybe all of it.”

“So what do you want to do? Hide in your room all day?” Tara’s voice sounded harsh.

“Maybe! That would be nice.” It did sound very inviting.

“Well you can’t!” I wasn’t sure if Tara was being mean, or trying to kick me out of my bad mood.

“Today you have to be on show – all day today. You don’t get a choice. And it starts with breakfast. It was your idea to cook all this for breakfast. I would have settled for beans on toast – but nooo! You had to go all out! So now you’re going to call everyone in here and we’re going to have a big breakfast together. Dammit!”

Okay, now she was ranting at me. In a weird kind of way it was good to hear her getting angry with me, she’d been so down on herself and now she was all fired up. The bad side was that she was all fired up at me.

I surrendered. I’d briefly considered letting Rebecca Louise deal with everything and I would hide in the back of my brain and let it happen. I decided that I really wanted to enjoy today and hiding in the back of my skull wasn’t a good way to do that.

“Okay! Okay! Let’s do this. It’s going to be fun,” I said.

I yelled out that breakfast was ready and started putting pancakes on plates. A goggle-eyed Angie came flapping and slapping into the kitchen first, followed by The Parents and Daddy D. All three of them looked a bit bleary eyed and half awake and not at all in the birthday party spirit. I grinned to myself. I was about to do something about that.