“What’s all this?”
“We’re mashing up leaves.”
“Why.”
“We’re going to make paper.”
So this is Linda’s revenge. Shredded brown stuff, pulpy and stemmy, lies in a puddle of tea-colored water in the bathtub. Linda is using the potato masher, and Jodie has the wooden thing you use to pound meat—a mallet, I guess it’s called.
“Get this mess out of here. I’m not running a day-care service, you know.”
“This isn’t a mess,” Linda says. “It’s a worthwhile endeavor.”
“You never have any fun,” Jodie says. “Is that why you’re mad?”
“No, it’s because every time I open a door, you’re behind it.”
“Do you want to make paper with us?”
Mom had to go in for a special meeting at her office yesterday morning. Pudge was pressuring her to name a date when “all this” would be over and things at Brooksbie would get back to normal. I had to wait for Marty to show up at the house before I could leave for school. Then Mom was enraged at my allowing Dad to sit in front of the light box, between my watch and Marty’s watch, a total of two hours. She said he will have to skip the light box for a few days because she thinks it’s dangerous. I said I thought that was a mistake, even though deep down I’m not sure it’s doing any good. And of course we had to pretend everything was okay, because we were talking in front of Dad.
When I managed to get Mom out of the room, I told her that I couldn’t meet my family obligations if Jodie was going to be over all the time, that I would have to be paid for babysitting. “I’ll take care of Dad,” I said. “I’ll even take care of Linda. But I won’t take care of Jodie.”