Little Red Lies by Julie Johnston Page A

nothing in the script tells me to, but it’s not all right to say I
am
sad and why.”
    After a moment, I say, “No, it isn’t. I was wrong to suggest a change at all.”
    Ruthie grins at me. She loves it when I’m wrong. She says, “It’s too bad, really, because I kind of enjoyed beefing up my role. It felt right. I felt like a true actress.”
    We part then, Ruthie hurrying along to her house. I poke along to mine, but, as I amble in, I hear Jamie almost shouting, “I’m
not
getting lazy!”
    “Well, you need a tonic, then.”
    “All right, all right! Stop badgering me. I’ll go to the doctor!”
    I half-expect Mother to tell him to go to his room, but it’s Mother who leaves.
    “Maybe I should take your advice and start writing a book about the war,” he says to me.
    I hang my spring jacket on a kitchen chair, knowing Mother will come back and tell me to move it. “Of course you should.”
    “Mother thinks I’m a lazy bum.”
    “No, she doesn’t.”
    “Oh, but she does. She said as much. Now, if I were to say I was writing down my war experiences, I could stay in my room with the door shut and no one would see me doing nothing. That’s what upsets her. She can’tstand to see a member of this family being idle. You can read a book, but not for too long and not in the morning because that’s when chores
have
to be done. Useless to imagine you can put them off until the afternoon. You can listen to records or the radio, but not for more than an hour and not every day. And you definitely cannot lie around sleeping in the daytime, especially when the sun’s out, without someone telling you to go to the doctor.”
    “I think you need to have a plan. She would stop pestering you if you had a plan of action.”
    “I have a plan. I’m going to start winding my watch on a regular basis and just go on from there.”
    “Ruthie said you told her sister you were going to become a commercial artist. I didn’t know you were good at drawing.”
    “Good at drawing!
Ha!
I can barely draw a breath.” He laughs so hard at his own joke he chokes, and Mother returns to pound him on the back and hand him a glass of water. “I’m just a little out of shape,” he gasps.
    “We’ll go to the doctor first thing in the morning,” Mother says.
    “Not we, I.”
    “I think you need me to go with you.”
    “Mother, I’m a grown man. Why would I …? Can you not just leave it up to me?” He leans on the table with his head in his hands.
    “I go with your father,” she points out. “It’s better if there are two heads to take everything in; that way I can remind your father to take his pills, or do whatever it is he’s supposed to do.”
    “God!”
    “Don’t swear.”
    “Does he go with you when you have a medical problem?”
    “Well, no, of course not. He doesn’t want to be involved with women’s things. Why would he?”
    “Good God,” I hear him mutter as he goes upstairs.
    I head up shortly afterwards and, through his half-open door, I can see him at his desk reading from a sheaf of papers tied together with string.
    Letters not sent
.
    A week has passed since I last wrote about the night we attacked a bombed-out schoolhouse full of German soldiers. I still can’t get over how young they all looked. I can’t move on till I finish this because I can’t get it out of my head
.
    Nothing happened after our grenades went off. The silence was worse than the expected explosion. When the dust settled, weapons at the ready, we went in to search the ruins for ammunition but didn’t find any. Instead, among desksand benches, we found bodies and body parts of the young soldiers. In the now-bright moonlight, we moved carefully around the debris. As I’ve said before, I don’t have the heart for this job of killing people. The enemy, the ones still with faces, in death looked like children pretending to be asleep
.
    Part of the floor above us remained intact, and so did a staircase against one wall. The