The Truth about Mary Rose by Marilyn Sachs Read Free Book Online

mouse mermaids chasing a bunch of catfish. I had also made two window shades for the kitchen windows out of toothpicks and strips of gift-wrapping paper.
    “What will you do for a crib for him?” I asked.
    “I haven’t decided yet. I’m trying to think of something that has sides so he won’t fall out.”
    “How about a matchbox? That’s about the right size, and then we could glue toothpicks on the sides for bars.”
    “That’s a good idea.”
    We had to go down for dinner then. The two youngest girls had eaten earlier, so it was only the five of us—my aunt and uncle, Pam, Jeanette and me.
    Aunt Claudia kept asking me questions about my father. Had he found a studio yet? How many more paintings had he sold? Was he happy to be back in New York again? Every time I was over visiting, she generally would talk about my father. I guess she liked to talk about him as much as my grandmother did. Aunt Claudia had been studying painting for the past couple of years. She did a lot of still lifes. Usually the ones she did had a vase of flowers and a couple of apples or oranges or bananas rolling around on a table.
    She always kept on saying that I should be very proud of my father, and not listen to what ignorant people had to say. She said there weren’t many people who had the courage to give up everything for their art the way my father had, and that the greatest artists who ever lived usually were not understood in their own time, and mostly died paupers, and so did their wives and families.
    There weren’t any empty, small matchboxes in the house, so Pam and I brought a lemon upstairs. We cut the lemon in half, and each of us had to suck our way through to the peel. We would end up with two empty lemon halves, and one of them could serve as a temporary cradle for the baby mouse until we could make him a permanent one.
    Sucking lemons also made us feel better. We both needed to suffer since we had made each other unhappy.
    “It was my fault,” I said, after I had finished. “And I’m sorry.”
    Pam was still running her tongue around the inside of her lemon half, and shuddering. I waited for her to finish, and then I said again, “I’m sorry.”
    “No,” Pam said. “It was my fault. It’s stupid to be jealous of somebody who’s dead, and I’m sorry.”
    “Well, let’s both be sorry, and never fight again as long as we live.”
    “All right,” Pam said, “and, Mary Rose, will you promise me one thing?”
    “What?”
    “When you find Mary Rose’s box, you won’t open it until I’m with you.”
    “But, Pam, I have to open it.”
    “You have to open it just to make sure it was her box, but you don’t have to look at what’s inside until we’re together.”
    No! I thought inside myself. No! I don’t want to share that box with Pam. I don’t want to share that box with anybody. I want to find it, and take it upstairs to my room and lock the door. I want to open it slowly, and look inside. It won’t glitter like a treasure, I know that, but it will look like something I’ve been looking for all my life. I don’t know what that is, but I will know it when I look in the box. And the box is for me. Because I’m Mary Rose, the second Mary Rose. And she and I are connected in a way that doesn’t belong to anybody else.
    Pam said, “Are you going to promise or not?”
    She was sitting so close to me, I could smell the lemon on her breath. I could lie to her, I thought. I could tell her I’ll wait, and then go ahead and look. She’d never know. But I was never good at lying. Mom said listening was sneaky and dishonest, but the reason I always had to listen was really because I am a very honest person. I like to know the truth. Grownups never tell kids the truth, so the only way you can find it out for yourself is to listen. But I don’t lie. Even when Mom catches me and asks was I listening. Maybe I won’t answer, but if I do, I’ll say yes, I was. Even if I know she’ll get mad and yell.
    So