Home Truths Read Online Free

room, across the hall. “Watch me!” travels unheard over the quiet lawn and the silent lake, and then dissolves.
    The walls of the summer house are thin. The doors have been thrown back and the windows pushed as high as they will go. Young Irmgard wakes up with her braids undone and her thumb in her mouth. She has been dreaming about her cousinBradley; about an old sidewalk with ribbon grass growing in the cracks. “I’ve got it,” cried the witch who had captured Jorinda, and she reached out so as to catch Jorindel and change him into a bird.
    Poor Mrs. Bloodworth is learning to dance. She holds the handle of the dining-room door and swivels her feet in satin shoes, but when she lets go the handle, she falls down flat on her behind and stays that way, sitting, her hair all over her face, her feet pointing upward in her new shoes. Earlier, Mrs. Bloodworth was sitting that way, alone, when, squinting through her hair, she saw Irmgard sitting in her nightgown on the stairs. “Are you watching the fun?” she said in a tragic voice. “Is it really you, my sweet pet?” And she got to her feet and crawled up the stairs on her hands and knees to kiss Irmgard with ginny breath.
    There is prohibition where Mrs. Bloodworth comes from. She has come up to Canada for a party; she came up for just one weekend and never went away. The party began as a wedding in Montreal, but it has been days since anyone mentioned the bride and groom. The party began in Montreal, came down to the lake, and now has dwindled to five: Irmgard’s mother and father, Mrs. Bloodworth, Mrs. Bloodworth’s friend Bill, and the best man, who came up for the wedding from Buffalo. “Darling pet, may I always stay?” said Mrs. Bloodworth, sobbing, her arms around Irmgard’s mother’s neck. Why she was sobbing this way nobody knows; she is always crying, dancing, embracing her friends.
    In the morning Mrs. Bloodworth will be found in the hammock outside. The hammock smells of fish, the pillow is stuffed with straw; but Mrs. Bloodworth can never be made to go to bed. Irmgard inspects her up and down, from left toright. It isn’t every morning of the year that you find a large person helplessly asleep. She is still wearing her satin shoes. Her eyeballs are covered with red nets. When she wakes up she seems still asleep, until she says stickily, “I’m having a rotten time, I don’t care what anybody says.” Irmgard backs off and then turns and runs along the gallery – the veranda, Mrs. Bloodworth would say – and up the side of the house and into the big kitchen, where behind screen doors Mrs. Queen and Germaine are drinking tea. They are drinking it in silence, for Germaine does not understand one word of English and Mrs. Queen is certainly not going to learn any French.
    Germaine is Irmgard’s
bonne d’enfant
. They have been together about a century, and have a history stuffed with pageants, dangers, near escapes. Germaine has been saving Irmgard for years and years; but now Irmgard is nearly eight, and there isn’t much Germaine can do except iron her summer dresses and braid her hair. They know a separation is near; and Irmgard is cheeky now, as she never was in the past; and Germaine pretends there have been other children she has liked just as well. She sips her tea. Irmgard drops heavily on her lap, joggling the cup. She will never be given anything even approaching Germaine’s unmeasured love again. She leans heavily on her and makes her spill her tea. Germaine is mild and simple, a little dull. You can be rude and impertinent if necessary, but she must never be teased.
    Germaine remembers the day Irmgard was kidnapped. When she sees a warm August morning like this one, she remembers that thrilling day. There was a man in a motorcar who wanted to buy Irmgard ice cream. She got in the car and it started moving, and suddenly there came Germaine running behind, with her mouth open and her arms wide, and Molly,the collie they had in those