THERE WAS NO NIGHT air coming through Frankie and Elizabeth’s bedroom window, not even as much as a whisper to waft the curtains. Frankie lifted her head from the pillow and kicked off the cotton sheet to cool her bare feet. She rolled over in her bed and found Bismarck next to her, stretched out in Joan’s spot. His head was only a few inches away, his mouth open and panting from the closeness of the June heat. Frankie turned back over to get away from his hot breath, which incidentally had the scent of rotted beans. The thin mattress squeaked on the metal frame when she turned, and Elizabeth stirred in her bed across the room.
Frankie didn’t know what time it was, or how long she’d been asleep, or for that matter why she had awakened. But the sun had not yet made itself known, so she figured it was either very late or very early. No matter, she decided; she was awake, and so she got out of bed. As her feet touched the wood floor, Bismarck lifted his head and whined. Frankie whispered to him that he shouldn’t be bothered with what she was up to and to go back to sleep, which he promptly did. That dog.
Frankie slipped out of her room and down the hall toward the kitchen for a glass of water. The apartment was dark, and she stepped lightly on the floorboards so as to not awaken anyone. Guiding herself using her hands along the walls, she felt for the walnut dresser that stuck out a good bit in the hallway, the one that she had tripped over more than once even with the lights on. The dresser belonged to Grandma Engel, passed down from her mother, but was too big to fit in Grandma Engel’s apartment, too big to fit in the Baums’ apartment either, to be honest, but there it sat in the hall serving as a catchall for extra bed linens, holiday candles, and anything else that no one knew where to put.
Daddy cursed the thing on more than one occasion because it sat just outside his and Mother’s bedroom, on the left side of the hall, which happened to be in his blind spot. Coming out of his bedroom, he must’ve knocked his knee on the side of it a thousand times, and after each swore, “Mark my words. One of these days, you will meet your fate with an axe!” Daddy didn’t own an axe, so far as Frankie knew, but still, she wouldn’t have been surprised if one day she came home and there was nothing left in the hall but a pile of splinters.
Frankie filled a water glass and sipped from it on the way back to her room. She was thinking of Joan and feeling lonelier than she remembered—do you ever notice how things always seem worse at nighttime?—when she heard something. She stopped and listened quietly for a moment, not sure what she’d heard or if she’d really heard something at all, for sometimes, as it was in her experience, the ears could play clever tricks. She waited, still listening, until just about the time she would have given up, when she heard another something that was, she was sure, an actual something. And it came from the living room.
She tiptoed through the dining room without giving a thought about what could have made the actual-something noise, which, in truth, was a careless thing to do, for who knows what terrible things lurk in the dark? But still, on she went into the living room, where she promptly tripped over an outstretched leg. A leg! She screamed, understandably, and dropped her water glass, which shattered against the floor.
Daddy yelled then, for he was as startled as Frankie, perhaps more so, as it turned out that the leg she tripped over belonged to him.
“Daddy!” said Frankie after he switched on the lamp. “What are you doing?”
He quickly picked up the handset of the telephone, which he had dropped moments before, then mumbled something into it and returned it to the base. “Quiet,” he whispered to Frankie, looking toward the hall as if he expected to see Mother or at least Bismarck coming to see what was going on. “And I should ask you the same.”
“I was just getting a drink and heard a noise.” Frankie knelt down and started gathering the pieces of broken glass from the braided rug. She glanced up at Daddy still sitting in the upholstered chair and then at the telephone on the side table next to him.
“It was dark and I didn’t think anyone was . . . It must’ve been you I heard, on the telephone. What time of night is it?”
“Close to three, I believe. Now go get yourself a towel,” said Daddy. “I’ll take care of the glass.”
Frankie hurried to the kitchen and grabbed a tea towel from the drawer. By the time she returned to the rug, Daddy was on his knees picking up the shards of glass. Frankie pressed the towel into the braids to soak up the spill.
“There, now,” said Daddy, holding the shards in his cupped hand. “I think that should do it. I don’t think we need to worry Mother about this, do you?”
Frankie shook her head. Frankie and Joan, and even Elizabeth, went out of their way to keep Mother from worrying. Mother worried about everything, and made a big to-do about the littlest things, which, to be honest, was embarrassing. If it weren’t for Daddy, none of the Baum girls would’ve learned to roller-skate or swim or ride a horse. Mother would’ve been too nervous to allow it. So Frankie was happy to keep the secret with Daddy, although she wondered if there were other reasons besides the broken glass that he didn’t want Mother to know.
Daddy took the damp towel from her and carefully emptied the broken glass into it. He started to get up but fell back to his knees.
“Daddy?”
“Give me a hand, would you, Frankie?”
She gripped his arm and helped him upright. “Are you all right?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” he said, taking some deep breaths. “Now, back to bed.” He kissed her forehead.
“Good night.” Slowly, Frankie padded out of the room, but then turned in wonder. “Aren’t you going to sleep, too?” she whispered.
“Soon,” he answered.
Frankie continued on, and looked back once more as Daddy sat back down in the chair and switched off the lamp. She climbed back into bed beside Bismarck, who was moving his paws in a dream chase. There Frankie lay for quite a while, listening to Bismarck’s occasional whimper and wishing more than anything that Joan were there. It wasn’t like Daddy to be up in the middle of the night, and whom was he talking to at this hour?
“Elizabeth,” whispered Frankie. “Psst, Elizabeth!”
“Go to sleep,” murmured Elizabeth as she turned over in her bed with her back toward Frankie. This was just as well, because telling Elizabeth anything would ensure it got back to Mother eventually.
Frankie hugged her pillow tight, but it wasn’t until she heard Daddy knock into the walnut dresser a while later, on the way to his bedroom, and then curse at it, that she was able to fall asleep.