Creatures of Habit Read Online Free Page A

mother said they could not.
    â€œI don’t blame you at all!” Mrs. Hopper had said, her tanned bare foot swinging back and forth while she sipped a glass of tea. She had a thin silver chain around her ankle. Caroline was hiding under the bushes near where they sat, a cowgirl hat pulled low to disguise herself. “Just who does this sister-in-law of yours think she is?”
    â€œDoris Day.” Caroline’s mother laughed and sat down. “Doris Day on the darkest night of her life.”
    â€œI have never missed my ex-relatives,” Mrs. Hopper said. “Divorce is good for something.” Then they began talking about their yards. Mrs. Hopper said next she’d like to pave hers and then paint the grass and flowers in place. Caroline’s mother said she pictured something different altogether: new place, new town, new weather.
    Not an hour after that the station wagon scraped its awful sound, the car horn blasted several short notes, and Caroline’s mother rushed past, her perfume sweet and clean in the still summer heat. Her father followed, the screen door slamming shut behind him. Mrs. Hopper was out in her yard just as she had said she would be, to catch a peek, her hair wrapped in a white towel as she sat in a lawn chair letting the sprinkler spray her tanned legs. Danny made a face and shook his head back and forth when Mrs. Hopper lifted her hand in a wave. Caroline was still looking for some sign that she really was a witch but aside from the big purple beads around her neck and the black thumbnail, which she
said
she got when she accidentally hit herself with a hammer, had not come up with anything.
    â€œFat as ever,” Danny said and nudged Caroline when Uncle Tim caught their mother up in a big hug and lifted her right up off the sidewalk. “Posse’s coming,” Danny said andsniffed the air, pointed to the walk where they all stood. Caroline counted eight of them if you included that baldheaded spit-up-smelling baby.
    â€œI smell ’em all right.” Danny swung his legs over the banister. “You keep a watch while I blaze the getaway trail and set up camp.” He pointed to the rubber tomahawk strapped to his belt. Then he jumped down behind the box shrubs and was gone, scrambling on hands and knees to the back of the house.
    Caroline was on the verge of following when her parents called to her, all the relatives lined up and waiting, baskets of food and a box of diapers at their feet. It was like playing firing squad that time when Danny tied a dish towel over her face and leaned her back against a tree and had all those boys from his neighborhood club lined up and ready for his signal. “When you hear the shots, you gotta fall out and be dead,” he had whispered, and then she waited. She waited until the whole yard was silent, bracing herself for the jump. “I’m getting tired,” she finally called. “Go on and shoot, okay?” No answer. “Danny!” She had screamed his name until her face felt hot. The yard was silent, and when she finally got free, Danny and the Indian Scouts were nowhere in sight. It was against all the rules to tattle so that night she asked Danny why he had tricked her. He said it wasn’t atrick, it was a test. It was the first test, being still and being quiet, and she had passed.
    The relatives had gotten out of the car and stood around nodding exactly like those spring-neck dogs that the man who owned the meat market had in the back window of his car. “I ain’t having nothing to do with these relatives,” Danny had said last night when he crept into her room and knelt by the bed. He said the word “relatives” the same way he spit out “love,” so quick it didn’t linger in his mouth. “I’m pretending they ain’t even here and you better do the same, Caroline.” He pronounced her name with two syllables,
Care-line.
She could see by the