Arrowood Read Online Free PDF Page B

on all the lights, calling Granddad in a panic to ask him what to do. Instead she felt around for her sleeping pills, swallowed one dry, and sent me back to my room.
    I was tired and light-headed when I woke up in the morning, though my stomach felt better, and if whatever I had was contagious, the twins hadn’t yet come down with it by afternoon. We were playing Girl Scouts on the expansive front lawn, and I was the long-suffering troop leader. I wasn’t supposed to take them outside, but it wasn’t nearly as fun to play Scouts indoors. The twins were easily distracted and didn’t pay any attention as I lectured them about their imaginary badges for making s’mores and identifying birds. They weren’t old enough, really, for games with rules, and I wished that Mom would play, too. She hadn’t played Girl Scouts with me in a long time. When she was pregnant with the twins, we had spent whole afternoons stretched out on her bed playing Candy Land. She would nod off sometimes in between turns, and I would stare at her stomach where her shirt had ridden up, the skin stretched so tight that it was tearing apart, jagged pink fissures spiraling out from her protruding belly button. The bigger her stomach got, the less patience she had for games.
Playing with children is hard,
she had told me, spreading her swollen fingers across the mound of her belly and pushing back against the pointy elbows and knees that gouged her from the inside.
Once your sisters are born, you’ll have someone to play with you all the time
.
    The twins lolled on the blanket I’d spread in the shade of the mimosa tree, where the afternoon sun couldn’t reach us. We were close to the house, close enough that I thought Mom wouldn’t yell at me if she found out we’d gone outside. None of our neighbors were out enjoying the nice weather. Mrs. Crutchfield, who lived in the Neoclassical to our left, had a diabetic foot and rarely left the house. Across the street, the Brubakers’ Queen Anne sat empty, surrounded by scaffolding so that it could be painted and repaired while Mr. and Mrs. Brubaker were on vacation in the Wisconsin Dells. I glanced at Ben’s house and considered asking for a third time if he could come out to play. The first time I’d knocked, his mother said he couldn’t leave his room until he finished practicing his violin. He’d only recently started lessons and was still struggling with the first and simplest exercise, “Mississippi Hot Dog,” which didn’t even count as a song. Ben hadn’t wanted to play violin. He had wanted to take an art class at the Y, but his mother hadn’t given him a choice. The second time I knocked, Mrs. Ferris hadn’t even bothered to answer the door.
    Workers from the landscaping company were making a racket in the Ferrises’ yard, at work on an all-day project to prepare their lawn, shrubs, sprinklers, and flower beds for fall. Two of the Tru-Lawn trucks were parked at the curb in front of our house, and an unfamiliar gold-colored car sat behind them. It was getting to be naptime for the twins, and I knew that I should take them inside before my mother came looking for them.
    I remember holding Violet’s soft, sweaty hand, admiring the clover crowns I’d strung together and placed on her and Tabby’s identical white-blond heads in lieu of Girl Scout beanies. They were beautiful children, with my mother’s pale hair and skin. Most people had trouble telling them apart. Even our father would sometimes call the twins by the wrong names when he scooped them up to kiss them good night. But I could always tell the difference. There were subtle clues that anyone could have noticed—Vi had a way of tilting her head when she smiled or laughed, and Tabby was the shyer of the two—but beyond that, I’d always had a sense of who was who. Violet was Violet and Tabitha was Tabitha, and anyone who loved them like I did could have told them apart in the dark.
    The twins were fighting sleep and so was I,