Home Truths Read Online Free Page B

Bradley’s my cousin and everything.” This is a good answer. She has others, such as, “I’m English-Canadian only I can talk French and I’m German descent on one side.” (Bradley is not required to think of answers; he is American, and that does. But in Canada you have to keep saying what you are.) Irmgard’s answer – about Freddy – lies on the lawn like an old skipping rope, waiting to catch her up. “Watch me,” poor Mrs. Bloodworth said, but nobody cared, and the cry dissolved. “I like Freddy,” Irmgard said, and was heard, and the statement is there, underfoot. For if she still likes Freddy, why isn’t he here?
    Freddy’s real name is Alfred Marcel Dufresne. He has nine sisters and brothers, but doesn’t know where they are. In winter he lives in an orphanage in Montreal. He used to live there all the year round, but now that he is over seven, old enough to work, he spends the summer with his uncle, who has a farm about two miles back from the lake. Freddy is nearly Irmgard’s age, but smaller, lighter on his feet. He looks a tiny six. When he comes to lunch with Irmgard, which they have out in the kitchen with Germaine, everything has to be cut on his plate. He has never eaten with anything but a spoon. His chin rests on the edge of the table. When he is eating, you see nothing except his blue eyes, his curly dirty hair, and his hand around the bowl of the spoon. Once, Germaine said calmly,uncritically, “You eat just like a pig,” and Freddy repeated in the tone she had used,
“comme un cochon,”
as if it were astonishing that someone had, at last, discovered the right words.
    Freddy cannot eat, or read, or write, or sing, or swim. He has never seen paints and books, except Irmgard’s; he has never been an imaginary person, never played. It was Irmgard who taught him how to swim. He crosses himself before he goes in the water, and looks down at his wet feet, frowning – a worried mosquito – but he does everything she says. The point of their friendship is that she doesn’t have to say much. They can read each other’s thoughts. When Freddy wants to speak, Irmgard tells him what he wants to say, and Freddy stands there, mute as an animal, grave, nodding, at ease. He does not know the names of flowers, and does not distinguish between the colors green and blue. The apparitions of the Virgin, which are commonplace, take place against a heaven he says is
“vert.”
    Now, Bradley has never had a vision, and if he did he wouldn’t know what it was. He has no trouble explaining anything. He says, “Well, this is the way it is,” and then says. He counts eight beats when he swims, and once saved Irmgard’s life – at least he says he did. He says he held on to her braids until someone came by in a boat. No one remembers it but Bradley; it is a myth now, like the
matin du kidnap
. This year, Bradley arrived at the beginning of August. He had spent July in Vermont, where he took tennis lessons and got poison ivy. He was even taller than the year before, and he got down from the train with pink lotion all over his sores and, under his arm, a tennis racket in a press. “What a little stockbroker Bradley is,” Irmgard heard her mother say later on; but Mrs. Queen declared that his manners left nothing wanting.
    Bradley put all his own things away and set out his toothbrush in a Mickey Mouse glass he travelled with. Then he came down, ready to swim, with his hair water-combed. Irmgard was there, on the gallery, and so was Freddy, hanging on the outside of the railings, his face poked into the morning-glory vines. He thrusts his face between the leaves, and grins, and shows the gaps in his teeth. “How small he is! Do you play with him?” says Bradley, neutrally. Bradley is after information. He needs to know the rules. But if he had been sure about Freddy, if he had seen right away that they could play with Freddy, he would never have asked. And Irmgard replies, “No, I don’t,” and turns