Edith paused in her efforts to tie the laces on the older sister’s shoes (Cal had informed her that the sister was going to have a burned leg because she’d stopped to tie her shoes instead of running to safety), and focused on Cal.
Cal held the mother and father dolls in both hands at the top of the staircase. The plastic LEGO flames were still downstairs, where the fire had started in a fireplace that hadn’t been properly banked for the night, blocking the front door. Before Edith could ask how they were going to escape, Cal lifted the man’s arms and shoved the woman, making her topple down the stairs until she lay facedown on the black and white tiled foyer floor.
“Oops,” he said again, but in the deep voice of the father. “It was an accident,” he said again, the low rumble of that voice coming from a child sending chills up Edith’s spine.
But there are no such things as accidents, she wanted to say. Her thoughts paralyzed her, thoughts that no mother should have about her children. Thoughts that could lead to very dangerous places.
Leaning close to her grandson, she said, “It wasn’t really an accident, was it?”
He kept his head down and shook it. “She made the man angry. That’s why he pushed her.” His voice was small and childlike and choked with tears.
Edith swallowed. “Even when we’re angry, we use our words and not our hands, remember?”
Cal nodded slowly. “But sometimes when the man gets mad he forgets to use his words and instead does bad things.” He looked up at her and his eyes were bright with tears. “Can you fix her?”
Edith picked up the doll. Even without lifting the nightgown, she could feel the neck lolling loosely in her palm, and one arm was bent in a way it shouldn’t have been. “Yes,” Edith said, already standing, needing to get out of that room as soon as possible. Wanting to circumvent a tantrum for ending their play session so suddenly, she said, “I’ll let you come up to my workroom to watch me work while I fix her.” She leaned forward, looking into his eyes. “But it will have to be our secret.”
She saw his need for rules and structure battling with his desire to see what went on up in her attic workroom, a place he’d been forbidden since he was old enough to walk.
“Can you do that, Cal? Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. As if he’d been asked that before and already knew the answer.
A door slammed in the hallway, and they were both silent as they listened to C.J.’s heavy tread pass their door, then jog down the stairs before crossing the house toward the kitchen. A minute later, C.J.’s car sped out of the garage and down the drive, its tires crunching on the oyster-shell driveway.
Edith slipped the doll into her pocket. “Let’s clean up first, all right? And when your mother goes out to the beauty parlor later we’ll go upstairs.”
He regarded her with a serious face. “Okay.”
Edith began making the bed while Cal carefully tucked his dolls back into their beds and parked the truck where it belonged next to the LEGO fire station. They were almost finished when the bedroom door slowly opened and Cecelia stuck her head inside.
“Oh, hello, little man. I thought you were still sleeping.”
“Mama!” Cal ran to her with arms outstretched, gripping her tightly around her legs.
Cecelia bent to hug him, their hair blending together. When his father was around, he was much less demonstrative toward his mother, but Edith sensed that their bond went beyond mother and son. Sometimes, it seemed to Edith, it was more about just the two of them in a two-person boat, where they decided how fast and where to go, and there was no room for anybody else. Except when C.J. was around, and his physical similarity to his son seemed to meld them together to form a single person instead of just a team.
“We were playing fire truck,” Edith explained, glad the doll was hidden in the pocket of her housedress. She noticed that Cecelia was wearing the emerald green cashmere turtleneck sweater C.J. had given her on her last birthday, but the neck was pulled up as high as it could go instead of being folded over, hiding as much skin as possible.
Cal jumped with his hands held up, wanting his mother to lift him. Cecelia looked too thin and weary and certainly not strong enough to lift her son, but telling her not to would have been fruitless. She bent down and winced only a little as she lifted Cal to her hip.
“Mama, where’s your necklace?”
Before Cal was born, C.J. had bought a gold locket for Cecelia and had cut a lock of his own hair to put inside. Only Edith knew that Cecelia had replaced it with a lock of the baby’s hair, and she wore it against her heart almost every day.
Before she could protest, Cal was pulling at the neck of her sweater, looking for the chain. Cecelia stopped him, but not before Edith saw the finger-size bruises on the side of her neck, dark spots that looked like insects marching up from her chest.