Cat in Glass Read Free Page A

now, children. I have a surprise for you.”
    So, shielding our eyes and pointing at the receding silver balloon, Harry and I stumbled up the path to the front door and ran directly into Father’s surprise—Aunt Henrietta. He hadn’t told us he was expecting her, and I suppose we must have been playing and thus missed noticing the carriage that brought her from the station. At any rate, the unexpected sight of her ample, stalwart figure in the doorway affected us like a bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky. Harry and I were dumbstruck.
    Tenacity and the smells of starched lace and lavender hovered around Aunt Henrietta, mothlike. We had never known her very well. She lived far away, visited our house only one week a year, and always brought with her a suit of scratchy new underwear for each of us. She taught at a private girls’ school and raised large maroon roses in her spare time. I had two vivid memories of her, both of which at that moment crashed around inside my head like trapped finches. The first was of her slapping my hand as I reached for a third piece of cake at teatime. The second was of Harry’s gurgling screams as she held him by the ear and washed his mouth out with laundry soap. He had made the mistake of saying aloud that he “didn’t give a hoot about the heathen children in China,” a turn of phrase that he had picked up from Father.
    I suppose Harry and I must have looked a little bewildered as we stared up at her on the doorstep. She possessed hugely expressive black eyebrows, which she now raised into swooping arches that reached almost to the line of her stone-gray hair. “Children!” she said, her voice warm andsweet as those disgusting fig tarts she loved to eat. “How delightful to see you again.”
    Father put a hand on each of our shoulders. “Henrietta’s come to stay with us until Mother gets better. Isn’t that good of her?”
    The eyebrows dropped, and a sort of smile crackled its way across Aunt Henrietta’s powdery face. “Yes. I’ve come to help your father look after you for a little while. Won’t that be nice?”
    I suppose she thought she was doing the right thing. Perhaps she even thought this type of sacrifice would assure her of a place in heaven. After all, she was a solid and confident woman, with lucid ideas of the world. In all likelihood, it never occurred to her that she might only make matters worse by volunteering her services.
    Harry and I were too young to see any of this, however. I knew only that Aunt Henrietta’s presence at a time like this must mean that my mother was in terrible danger.
    I started the new venture off well—with a bloodcurdling scream followed by, “I won’t! I won’t let you look after me. It’s Mother’s job. Leave me alone!” I ran straight across the lawn and into the woods, where I found solace in the rough branches of a maple tree. I cried until dark, when, as no one came looking for me, I climbed down and made my way home, feeling hungry and deserted.
    Aunt Henrietta’s presence in the house caused Harry and me to spend more time than ever out of doors. By the middle of July, when we first met Clotaire, we already knew exactlywhich trees in our woods were favored by cardinals and which by mourning doves; we had explored every turnstile and rock wall inch by inch and even befriended the great black bull who sometimes grazed in the field adjoining our raspberry patch.
    Most important of all, we had learned to guess when the wonderful silver balloon was most likely to come drifting past. It had to be just the right kind of day. There had to be a line of dust shimmering like a halo on the road, and the sky had to look like Mother’s blue crystal vase. Then, if luck and the high breeze came our way, we might catch a glimpse of the balloon, shining like an errant moon in the perfect sunlight. Now and then, it came so near to us that we could discern and wave to the man in the basket. Sometimes he waved in return, and