Meet the Austins by Madeleine L'Engle Page A

ones.”
    â€œWhat about me?”
    â€œYou know perfectly well if you throw up you don’t get anything but ginger ale and crackers. I’m going back down to practice.”
    â€œYou’re doing it just to spite me,” John said. “Wait till I tell Mother.”
    â€œMother doesn’t like tattletales.”
    â€œWhy don’t you do something useful for a change,” John said. “Why don’t you do something to help Mother for once?”
    John looked green, and I should have realized he was being cross because he was sick, but it wasn’t my day, either, so I just snapped back, “Like what?”
    â€œJust use your head, Victoria Austin. If you can’t think of
something to do to help Mother, you’re even dumber than I think you are.”
    â€œYou think I’m dumb?”
    â€œI know it.”
    â€œI’m in the top group in my grade.”
    â€œThat doesn’t prove a thing. You’re so dumb you couldn’t think of anything to do to help Mother.”
    â€œOh, couldn’t I?” I said. “I’ll let the air out of the upstairs radiators, that’s what I’ll do. They were knocking last night and Mother said this morning she’d have to let the air out of them.”
    â€œHas she ever let you do it before?”
    â€œShe’s never said I couldn’t. Why shouldn’t I?”
    â€œIt’s on your own head,” John said. “Go ahead, if you think you’re so smart.” And he pushed his face into the pillow and burrowed under the covers again.
    Maybe I should explain about the radiators. We have hot-water heat. The hot water circulates through the radiators, and when air gets in with the hot water it keeps the hot water from circulating properly, and the radiators don’t give off as much heat, and they make noises. We keep the upstairs thermostat lower than the downstairs one because we like to sleep in cool rooms and it saves oil, so the upstairs radiators seem to get air in them more often than the downstairs ones, where the water is constantly circulating most of the winter. Each radiator has a sort of little valve, and you take a key that looks like a very small roller-skate key and turn the valve, and hold a glass under the outlet. The air hisses out and you hold the glass there until a little stream of water flows into it, and then you know the air
is out of the radiator. Mother keeps the upstairs key on her dressing table so it won’t get lost, and I went and got it.
    First I let the air out of the radiators in John’s room, to annoy him. Then I did Mother’s and Daddy’s room, and then Suzy and Maggy’s, and then Rob’s and mine. I was doing the radiator by the north window and all of a sudden I felt the radiator key just turning and turning and I couldn’t get it to shut off the valve at all. I took it out and a tiny sort of screw came out, and water came pouring out of the valve place and the outlet place, shooting out at the wall and the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing to do to stem the wild stream except put my fingers over the two places and hold. I was afraid the water might scald me, but I guess the little holes were so tiny that it didn’t, because it didn’t seem particularly hot, only very uncomfortable. I felt exactly like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
    â€œJohn!” I yelled. “John!”
    â€œI’m trying to sleep,” he yelled back. “Leave me alone.”
    â€œBut a screw came out of the radiator!”
    â€œI told you you’d make a mess of it. Go tell Mother.”
    â€œI can’t! If I take my fingers away from the two little holes the water shoots all over the place.”
    â€œServes you right,” John said.
    â€œPlease call her for me,” I begged.
    â€œCall her yourself,” he said. “I’m sick.”
    â€œBut I can’t! I can’t