Falling Angels Read Online Free Page A

he said, as if that didn’t take the cake.
    Norma and Sandy came into the room and went over to stand beside Lou, who was feeling their mother’s forehead. Their mother was asleep on her back, all the blankets thrown off.
    “She’s burning up,” Lou whispered.
    “Even her hand,” Norma whispered, stroking it.
    Sandy felt the other hand, the tapered fingers that were smooth and ladylike from no work. “We’re sorry,” shewhispered. She assumed that their mother’s fever was caused by them finding out about their brother.
    The rest of the day, although he was home, their father had them doing the checking-up on her. “When you’re straight commission, you can’t afford to get sick,” he said. She never really woke up. They didn’t think about taking her to the bathroom, and sometime after lunch she wet the bed. Then their father was forced to come in and carry her out into the hall, where he changed her nightgown while Norma and Lou changed the sheets. That night he slept on the chesterfield.
    The next morning she was awake when they went in to see her. She didn’t speak, but she looked at each of them in turn as if she had something important to say. “What?” they urged her. They brought her a bowl of Frosted Flakes and tried to feed her, but she wouldn’t chew or even swallow until Lou got the idea of putting a plastic Flav-R straw in her mouth. After she had sipped up all the milk in the bowl, they walked her to the bathroom, Lou supporting her on one side and Norma on the other. Lou and Norma rubbed deodorant under her arms on top of her nightgown and brushed her teeth as she sat on the toilet, and Sandy combed her long, wavy hair that was as golden as her own, that she twined with her own to enjoy the likeness. All the while they asked her if she was all right and begged her to answer, but she could hardly keep her eyes open.
    “Shovel those liquids into her,” their father ordered when he phoned from work. He suggested soup, Postum, evaporated milk, juice. Any liquid in the house except for her “coffee.”
    For six days she was the same. Sleeping most of the time, feverish, thrashing, incoherent. Obviously upset. “I wonder what she’s dreaming about?” Norma said.
    “Television shows,” Lou decided. “All mixed up together. Hoss and Lassie and the Beaver.”
    “Yeah,” Norma said. “And they’re all fighting, and the show never ends.”
    It didn’t occur to the girls that their mother should have a visit from a doctor. Nobody who wasn’t related to them ever visited. Aunt Betty phoned once, to see if everyone had recovered from Christmas, and Norma told her that their mother had the flu, but she never thought to ask for help. She and Lou did everything around the house anyway. The only job Sandy did was the mending. That started one day when, without being asked, she sewed patches on the worn-through elbows of their father’s red flannel shirt. It turned out that she could darn, too. She had their mother’s talent that way. The fact that she was a miniature of their mother meant that this was no big marvel. It also meant that nobody pressed other chores on her—nobody imagined that she might be good for anything else.
    “How’s the food situation?” Aunt Betty asked.
    “We’re running out of stuff for Mommy to drink,” Norma admitted.
    “Well,
there’s
a blessing in disguise!” Aunt Betty screamed.
    In fact, it wasn’t just juice and soup and milk that they were out of, it was almost everything. Lou phoned their father to tell him, and he dropped by on his lunch hour with some grocery money.
    Usually Lou didn’t mind doing the shopping. It got her out of the house, and she always picked up a few chocolate bars for herself. But she minded today. She was worried about being away in case their mother died or had to go to the bathroom. And there had been a snowstorm and then freezing rain, so that coming home, it took all her strength to pull the loaded wagon across the