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“You!”
“Did you get her?” Mrs. Vernon called out from the kitchen. “Tell her to come at two.”
“What are you doing there?” I asked.
“Helping to clean up the place. It’s a real pigpen. He’s got engine parts all over the floor. There’s grease on everything.”
I tried to keep my voice low so Mrs. Vernon wouldn’t hear. “Bunny, how could you?” I said.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Bunny shouted into the phone. “You can’t talk to your mother like that.”
It wouldn’t do any good to argue about Eddie now. “Mrs. O’Brien wants to meet with us,” I said. “She wants you here at two.”
“At two? How am I supposed to be there at two? I’ve got a job.”
“Just be here,” I pleaded.
There was silence on the line for a few seconds. “What’s she want now?” Bunny asked finally.
“I don’t know, but it sounds important.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t tell them where I was, did you?”
“Of course not.”
“We’ve got to be careful.”
“I know.”
A long, thin sigh hissed over the telephone line. It sounded as if the strength were draining out of her. “You’ll be here at two, won’t you?” I asked.
“Of course, sweetheart,” she said softly.
She arrived fifteen minutes early. Sitting by the front window, I watched her park the Pontiac and come up the walk. She was wearing a white jacket over her purple sundress, and she had on her white leather sandals. Her hair made a yellow circle around her head. She took long, firm steps, her legs slicing through the air in clouds of purple cotton. Bunny had tried to teach me to “walk confident” like that. She’d marched around the living room, with me right behind, trying to imitate her strides and the purposeful swing of her arms. She could do it and look wondrous, a thoroughbred galloping over a field. But I was just clumsy, my gangly arms and legs always falling out of rhythm. There was too much of me. “That’s it! That’s it!” Bunny would yell as I circled the sofa and passed the TV—but I knew better. I never caught on, and the walking lessons fortunately stopped.
Mrs. Vernon hurried to greet Bunny at the front door and asked if we’d like to sit in the parlor.
“Sure, sure, sure,” said Bunny, waving her hand.
Mrs. Vernon deposited us on the sofa and then left quickly.
“I make her nervous,” Bunny said.
“She’s really strange. She came into my room last night and started screaming about serpents.”
“Serpents?”
“You know, snakes.”
“Snakes?” Bunny wrinkled her face into a question mark.
“She was crying and saying how serpents were the root of all evil. It was as if she was in a trance.” Bunny was still making a face. It occurred to me that this was probably not the smartest thing to talk about right now.
“Ugh,” said Bunny after a moment. “Snakes give me the creeps.”
