The Crazyladies of Pearl Street by Trevanian Read Free Book Online

considered slipping into my shoes and going out onto the stoop to await my father's arrival, but the night was cold, so I sat on the edge of my bed with my Hudson Bay blanket around me Indian-style and watched the street, as I would do night after night.
    My father never came. But, of course, you have anticipated that for some time.

    Settling In
    Back in Lake George Village, I had been used to waking up to the sounds of birds chirping and little creatures rustling in the woods behind the summer cottage we rented, but that first morning on North Pearl Street I was wrenched out of sleep by the sound of my mother thrashing around angrily back in the kitchen. I went in to find her wobbling precariously atop the narrow kitchen table as she snatched down the green crepe paper festoons. One loop was just out of reach and she almost fell stretching out for it. I suggested we move the table, and she told me the last thing she needed was a six-year-old telling her what to do, goddamnit! Then she came down and hugged my head to her stomach and said she didn't mean to snap at her first-born and good right hand, but she was determined to get rid of all this green party crap that reminded her of that no-good, lying, irresponsible bastard!
    Always spiky and short-tempered the morning after a night of grief or regret, she would rage against 'the big-shots' and 'the rotten way things are'. Although she always assured my sister and me that it wasn't us she was mad at, just the goddamned world out there, we were the ones who winced as she unleashed the famous French-'n'-Indian temper that served as both a purgative for depression and a source of flash energy in her struggle to keep our family together against the odds. This explosive safety valve of hers frightened Anne-Marie and angered me. Sometimes her shouting, door-slamming, pan-throwing rages against life's injustices would make me yell at her in defensive counter-rage, and we'd have a brief, hot word-fight that would make my sister recoil into herself. Then suddenly the storm would pass and we'd both be sorry. Mother would hug me and suggest that the three of us go out and play tag or Simon Says or some other kids' game. She was wonderful about playing games with us. Even after we came to Pearl Street and were under the eyes of the block's gossips, she would sometimes come out and play with us, shrugging off the harsh glances and captious muttering of neighbor ladies who thought she was just showing off her youth and energy and suppleness. As, indeed, she was, to a degree.
    Silent now, but simmering within, Mother gathered up the green paper plates and napkins and crammed them into a bucket that would serve as our garbage can until she could afford to buy one (we used that bucket for eight years), then she grasped the warm bottle of lime soda by its neck, stepped out into the sooty backyard and, throwing side-armed like a boy, hurled it over the weathered board fence into the back alley, where the bottle burst with an effervescent explosion that I'd have given anything to have seen.
    But what a waste! I'd never tasted green soda because my mother was against our drinking 'fizzy crap', in part because it wasn't good for us, and in part because it was expensive.
    Anne-Marie came padding sleepy-eyed into the kitchen and she knew immediately what had happened. She was painfully sensitive to Mother's rages and could always smell the sulfur in the air. She looked at the paper plates in the bucket, then at me. I shrugged. She smiled faintly and waited until Mother was not in the kitchen before she dared to retrieve a couple of the crumpled plates to play 'Saint Patrick's Day party' with.
    After a breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches Mother held the first of many 'war councils' around that kitchen table. Here's how things were: We were marooned on this slum street in this strange city where we didn't know anybody and nobody gave a damn about us, and we had only a little more than five bucks to