Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

The phone ranglate that night, after Josie was in bed but still awake. Her parents didn’t like phone calls after nine, because her father had to get up for work at five-thirty in order to leave the house by six-thirty. His job was on the other side of Baltimore, and he preferred heading out an hour earlier than necessary, when the roads were still relatively empty. He always said he’d rather have a quiet hour at his desk than leave later and battle traffic.

“Josie, sweetie?”

“Hmmm.” She was reading an American Girl book, although she knew she was getting too old for them.

“Which cupcakes did Kat eat today?”

Her mother’s carefully neutral tone told Josie that someone was in trouble. Had they gotten frosting on Kat’s shirt? Mrs. Hartigan was fussy about Kat’s clothes. No, Perri had been precise in her aim, smashing the cupcake into Kat’s face. Maybe Kat wasn’t supposed to eat cupcakes at all. This past year her mother had stopped giving her Lunchables, sending Kat to school with turkey sandwiches and carrot sticks. But Kat remained as round-faced as ever. Perhaps it was because Josie always shared her lunch with her.

“She really didn’t eat any,” Josie said.

“Really? Not even a bite?”

“Well, she might have had a little orange frosting. Why?”

“That was Mrs. Hartigan on the phone. Kat’s allergic to orange flavoring, of all things, and she has a horrible rash on her face and hands. She may have to miss the first day of school.”

Josie felt a flip-flop of panic in her stomach. Her parents were easygoing, but that simply made her more nervous about doing anything wrong. It wasn’t her idea to push the cupcake into Kat’s face. She shouldn’t be blamed.

“I didn’t know Kat had allergies.”

“She had a workup at the beginning of the summer, apparently. Although I have to say…I’ve never heard of an allergy to flavoring. I wonder sometimes if Mrs. Hartigan is a little-” Her mother broke off, as if she had noticed Josie’s sharpening interest. It was always fascinating when adults talked about other adults. They said the meanest things in the nicest ways and then acted so surprised if anyone suggested they didn’t like another adult, as if part of being grown-up was liking everyone, or pretending to.

“The important thing is, Kat’s going to be fine. It’s just a rash. Probably psychosomatic, for all we know. Kat’s a little delicate, isn’t she?”

Josie thought about this. Although Kat wasn’t athletic, she was strong and solid, even brave in her own way. She had let Perri push the cake in her face, knowing she was allergic to the flavoring. When she fell or slipped, she always got back up and kept going, laughing at her own clumsiness. Perri was the one who used her injuries and illnesses to make excuses, who hesitated when she had to do something physical.

Then again, Josie had the feeling that her mother was trying to say something nice about Josie, in a roundabout way-that Josie wasn’t delicate, that she didn’t have allergies, and if she did, she wouldn’t be so silly as to eat something that she knew would make her sick.

“I guess so.”

“Sometimes I think the mothers who don’t work-outside the home-tend to be a little more hysterical about the small things.”

“Mrs. Hartigan is nice . She lets us play with her makeup and fixes us special treats when we’re over there.”

Her mother reached toward Josie as if to smooth hair away from her face, then let her hand hover in space as if awaiting permission. Josie had gotten touchy about her parents’ touchy-feely ways. Finally her mother went ahead and did it anyway, and Josie didn’t protest.

“Do you wish I didn’t work?”

Josie thought about this. The truth-yes!-would make her mother feel bad. But she didn’t want to tell an out-and-out lie either.

“No, but I don’t like having a baby-sitter. I’m going to middle school now. I can look after myself, if not Matt and Timmy. Do we still have to have Marta?”

“Yes, according to the state of Maryland. Want to know something funny? When I was your age-well, just a little older-I was baby-sitting. Taking care of little babies, changing diapers. Diapers with pins, not the sticky tapes. Looking back, I’m just so glad nothing happened to the children in my care. I was completely over my head.”

“If you didn’t work, I could have gone out for travel soccer.”

“Really? You never said anything at the time. I thought you decided you’d rather concentrate on your gymnastics. You can’t do everything. If you took up a team sport, you wouldn’t have any time for Kat and Perri.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“We both have to work, your dad and I, if we want to live in a place like Glendale.”

“Yeah,” Josie said again.

“Not to mention having money for extras-like gymnastic lessons and trampolines and day camp.”

“Yeah.”

“Try saying ‘yes’ sometimes, Josie. It’s not that much effort to put the s on the end of it.” But she hugged her, and Josie had a moment of wishing she could be a little kid again, someone who got tucked in every night, really tucked in, with a story and a song, the way her brothers still did. Middle school was so very, very grown-up.

“Did you trulyhave an allergic reaction?” It was two days later, and Perri was studying Kat’s skin, as smooth and pink as ever.

“My mom took me to the emergency room, and they stuck me with a pen.”

“Like a marker?” Josie was puzzled.

“No, a special pen that sends something to your heart so your throat won’t close up and keep you from breathing. She thought I was going to die.”

Kat’s manner was calm as ever, her voice low; they had to lean in to hear her over the din of the lunchroom. The middle-school cafeteria was thrillingly chaotic, much noisier than elementary school.

“Did you think you were going to die?” Perri’s question struck Josie as odd. If your mother thought you were going to die, then of course you thought so, too. But Kat shook her head. Her hair, now worn loose from a center part, had grown quite long, and Josie noticed that a few of the older boys glanced at Kat’s shining banner of hair as it moved back and forth.

“I wasn’t scared at all. In fact, it was kind of interesting. I felt like Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Remember when she ate the gum and she turned into a giant blueberry?”

“ ‘Take her to the dejuicing room!’” Josie shouted in a fairly good imitation of the movie Willy Wonka, and the others laughed, which made her happy. She so seldom said something funny on her own.

“Exactly,” Kat said. “I just assumed they would take me to the dejuicing room and I would be fine. And that’s what the pen did. It dejuiced me. Everything stopped swelling, and I was okay.”

“But how could you be so sure that you weren’t going to die?” Perri did not want to let that part of the discussion drop.

“That’s not how death happens. From a cupcake, I mean.”

“A person can drown on a teaspoon of water,” Perri said with great authority. “So I suppose a cupcake can kill.”

“Well, it didn’t kill me .”

“How would you like to die?”

“Perri-that’s gross.” Kat had finished her lunch-a cup of yogurt, an apple, and a chopped green salad packed in Tupperware, with an individual packet of salad dressing. Josie slid two of her oatmeal cookies over to Kat, who smiled gratefully.

“No orange flavoring,” Josie said. “Everyone wants to die in their sleep.”

“Yes, but what if that wasn’t a choice? What if you had to choose from choking…” Perri paused for a moment. Her brain sometimes reminded Josie of a computer, taking a few seconds to switch from task to task, then humming along, faster and faster. “Choking or suffocation. Then burning up, plane crash or…”