“—will you listen, please.” She was growing loud now. “You need to get used to not having your own way all the time. I hate to say it,” but it was out of her mouth as fast as it could come, “Dorie has spoiled you something serious, letting you behave like a bunkhouse roughneck or worse.”
That infuriated me, not least for her picking on Gram while she was fighting for her life in the hospital. “Gram’s done the best she can, and I am, too, here. But you treat me like I’m a bum you took in. If I had that money you threw in the garbage, none of this would’ve happened.”
“That is no excuse for stealing,” she said loftily, advancing on me with her hand out for the hanky-wrapped coins.
“I don’t think it’s stealing,” I cried, “when you won’t give me anything and I’m only taking my five bucks of what we won as partners. Why, isn’t it stealing, just as much, for you to keep it all for yourself?”
“Donny,” she warned, all her face including the chins set in the kind of scowl as if she were battling with Herman over toast, “you are getting into dangerous territory and had better mind your manners, or—”
“The boy is right. Why do you have to be money pincher so much it is ridiculous?”
The figure in the doorway now was Herman, in pajama bottoms and undershirt.
Aunt Kate lost no time in turning the furious scowl on him. “Brinker, this does not concern you.”
“Pah. Why do you talk so silly? You like being wrong?” A thrill went through me when he didn’t back down, one hunter of what was needed to survive coming to the aid of another, if I wanted to get fancy about it. “I live here, Donny lives here, and as far as anybody in whole wide world knows, he is my grandnephew, too.” I couldn’t sort out the tangle in the middle of that sentence, but it didn’t seem to matter as Herman kept at her. “You talk big to him about behavior, but you should fix up your own while he is our guest.”
Aunt Kate had to work her mouth a few times to get the words out, but inevitably she managed, double-barreled. “That is enough out of both of you. We will sort this out in the morning. Donny, put that money back and go to bed. As for you, Brinker, keep your opinions to yourself if you’re going to share my bed.”
Neither of us wanting to fight her all night when she showed no sign of being reasonable, we complied. Herman waited at the doorway and put his hand on my shoulder as I trudged to the stairs, saying low enough that Aunt Kate couldn’t hear as she fussed around with the sewing machine and the change drawer, “Don’t let silly woman throwing a fit get you down, podner.”
? ? ?
IT DID, THOUGH. The next couple of days were a grind, with me sulking in my attic version of the stony lonesome or spending every minute I could out in the greenhouse with Herman.
Saturday came, after those days of Aunt Kate and I being as cautious as scalded cats around each other, and I could hardly wait to go with Herman again on his “medicine” run for a change of scenery, not to mention atmosphere. This morning, she was more than fully occupying her chair in the kitchen as usual but fully dressed for going out. Herman was nowhere around, but that was not out of the ordinary after their customary breakfast battle. In any case, Hippo Butt, as I now thought of her, actually smiled at me, a little sadly it seemed, as I fixed my bowl of soupy cereal, and naturally I wondered what was up.
I found out when she cleared her throat and said almost as musically as ever:
“Donny, I have something to tell you. After breakfast, pack your things. I’m sending you home.”
Home? There was no such thing. Didn’t she know that? Why else was I here? I stared at her in incomprehension, but her set expression and careful tone of voice did not change. “Hurry and eat and get your things, so we don’t miss your bus.”
“You can’t just send me back!” My shock and horror came out in a cry. “With Gram laid up, they’ll put me somewhere! An orphanage!”
“Now, now.” She puffed herself up to full Kate Smith dimensions as she looked at me, then away. “This hurts me as much as it does you,” which was something people said when that wasn’t the case at all. “After the sewing room incident, I wrote to your grandmother saying I have to send you back, without telling her that was the reason, so you’re spared that. I didn’t tell you before now because I didn’t want you to be upset.”
Talk about a coward’s way out. She did the deed by letter instead of telephone so there could be no argument on Gram’s part. And to keep clear of that starchy nun Carma Jean asking where her sense of charity was. And “upset”? How about overturned and kicked while I was down?