The Children's Crusade Read Online Free PDF Page A

shouted.
    Ryan darted into the doorway. James was jumping on the bed now, and Robert pushed past Ryan into the room and tried to kick the door closed, almost hitting Ryan in the process.
    “James,” Robert said, “stop jumping! We’re going to help Mommy, but you need to get dressed first.” His voice was gruff, and James jumped faster, his hair flapping against his ears.
    “James,” Ryan said in a sweet voice. He moved to the bed and held out his hands. “Come to Nye-nee.”
    “James!” Robert said, and then, softer, “Remember the cookie factory?”
    James turned his back on his brothers and jumped, and the bed creaked, and through the window he saw Rebecca standing outside under the oak tree, balancing on one foot with the other held way behind her, toes pointed, arms up over her head as if she were going to dive.
    “Beck,” he cried.
    “Beck will play with you,” Robert said, “but first you need to get dressed.” He lunged at James, and Ryan grabbed an arm, and together they got James flat on the bed.
    “Here,” Ryan said, “you can hold Badger,” but James rolled to his side and grabbed his own stuffed animal, a small brown-and-whitedog that he had more or less abandoned, though Ryan put it on James’s bed whenever he found it lying on the floor or in the closet.
    “Are you going to take care of Dog today?” Ryan said. “You can find him a new collar, or we could make one.”
    “Get clothes,” Robert said, “I’ll hold him,” and though Ryan knew that there was no need, that James would be still now, he went to the dresser while Robert kept his hands on James’s shoulders.
    They called Rebecca to come inside. In the kitchen, they told their mother they were ready to help, but she was busy chopping nuts and sent them away. A little later they tried again, but she was busy washing parsley and sent them away. They waited half an hour and tried again, then twenty more minutes and tried again.
    “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I have way too much work to stop and show you how to help. Go play, all right?”
    The children left the kitchen, the three R’s downcast while James dashed ahead of them with a three-year-old’s talent for easily abandoning dubious goals. “Chase me,” he called, but when he arrived at his room and turned around, his siblings were taking their time, too frustrated for their usual indulgence.
    Back in the kitchen, Penny was sorry—she knew she was disappointing them—but she really did have too much to do to be able to stop and explain the little jobs they could manage. She hadn’t been thinking straight at dinner last night, agreeing to let them help. Bill had encouraged them, and she’d gotten swept up in their excitement, which generally seemed manageable when he was around and overwhelming when he wasn’t. There was so much to do today, she needed to just put her head down and work. And the truth was she wanted to do it herself.
    The other truth was she didn’t want to do it at all. She was plagued by conundrums like this. A few days earlier she’d seen a picture in a magazine of a smiling woman wearing a little white apron decoratedwith the same red roosters as the ones on her own dish towels. Oh, how Penny hated that woman! And oh, how she wanted to be her! Even more, she wanted to be a woman she’d seen in another magazine, dressed in a sleeveless black dress and holding a martini. She’d cut out both pictures and taped them into a notebook where she kept articles she clipped from the newspaper about, as the headlines put it, “the social scene.” When Bill asked why she clipped these articles, she shrugged and turned her back on him, a gesture she’d inaugurated early in their marriage that was as unsuccessful now as it always had been. Rather than make him try harder, it made him give up.
    All morning, the children sensed their mother’s tension and were tense themselves. They tried to play Sorry, but James refused to follow the rules and