The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

“Oh!” she heard Mom say. “Ah—este bee-nuh?”

What was she saying? What was wrong with her? It occurred to Lauren that Mom was making a halting attempt at a foreign language.Another voice she’d never heard.

The pounding resumed, and a tiny figure appeared in the entryway to the kitchen. A scream rose up from the figure, who camebarreling down the hallway into the foyer where Lauren stood. A glad running girl. There was a confusion in the girl. Shewasn’t a toddler, but she was a toddler’s size, with a toddler’s unsteady gait. She walked as if walking were new to her.Her legs were long spindles, her hips rotating atop them with a mechanical grind. Her brown eyes shiny as marbles. She cockedher head and windmilled her skinny arms and stamped her feet and screamed again. Nothing could make her happier than seeingLauren there.

“Lauren,” Mom said over the little girl’s screams and Sean’s diminishing sobs, “I want you to meet someone very special.”Aunt Marie behind her, waggling her fingers at Lauren.

“Mom, you’re home,” Lauren said.

“Boo-nuh, cheh meh fatch!” the little girl was exclaiming.

“Mom?” Lauren was asking, trying to catch her mother’s eye. Mom hovered over the girl, her expression warm and worried. “Mommy,what’s going on?” The Mommy curled Lauren’s tongue, forced and fake.

“Hiya, hew-you! Hiya, hew-you!” The girl nodded in Lauren’s direction, staring over Lauren’s shoulder with an expectant, openmouthed smile. Her eyes reflected all the light in the room. “Bee-nuh! Bee-nuh!” She grabbed at Lauren’s hand and shook it as she jumped up and down. She knew what she meant. She was delirious as she welcomed her sister to her new home.

“You have a new sister?” Paula was chewing into the phone receiver, potato chips or something.

“An adopted sister,” Lauren said. It was late, past ten. She was sitting up in bed under the covers, the phone receiver inher lap. Mom’s and Mirela’s voices muffled through the adjoining wall of Sean’s bedroom, a bleating baby talk, oohs and whoos, little kids playing ghosts.

“That’s so cool,” Paula said, crunching. “It’s cool, right?”

“I mean, yeah,” Lauren said. “It’s a nice surprise.”

“A surprise?” Paula asked. “So you didn’t know this was happening?”

“Oh, I mean, I had an idea, sure—we talked about it,” Lauren lied. “It was a surprise just because we didn’t know exactlywhen it would happen. My mom didn’t want any false alarms.”

Crunch, crunch. “Huh. Wow. That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome.”

“Where’s she from? What’s her name?”

“Mirela, from Romania.”

“Wow, you never mentioned it at all,” Paula said, yawning.

Lauren sank into her bed, flat on her back, the phone at her ear half-propped against her pillow, the receiver and cord rising and falling slightly on her chest. A creak and a few soft clicks on Paula’s end of the line, too: fidgeting, nesting. Putting each other to bed. Moments before, Lauren had felt a heavy certitude that she would confide in Paula how blindsided she felt, how confused. Now she felt that heaviness changing form, descending into imminent sleep. Sleep would whisk away the unconfessed hurt before it traveled down the phone line, before Paula could hear that Lauren was an outsider to her own life, home, and family, that her own mother was a stranger to her.

“How old is she?” Paula asked.

“She’s, um—I think she’s three?”

“You think?”

Lauren laughed softly. “It’s been such a big day. I’m blanking out. I’ll tell you more tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Hey, Lauren, I’m really happy for you and your family. This is so exciting.” The sudden absence of Paula’susual sourness and skepticism made her simple congratulations feel startling, naked, almost painfully earnest.

“Thank you, Paula, so much.”

“Hey, before we get off the phone—come see my tree sometime,” Paula said. “Maybe tomorrow before rehearsal?”

“Your tree?”

“Yeah, the beech I’m making out of papier-mâché for the play. It’s so big I’ve had to construct it in three parts that I cansort of stack together. It’s taken over the prop room. I’m trying to figure out if I should make three different trees foreach night of the performance—because they have to fall down every night, you know? Or maybe I can make one tree that’s hardyenough to fall and get back up again. Oh, and maybe we need another one for dress rehearsal . . .”

Lauren laughed. “That sounds like a lot of work,” she said. “I can help you. I promise. I’ll come see your tree.”

The word Mom used a lot in those first weeks was exuberant. Also vivacious and lively and full of life.

“Our Mirela is so full of life—she just doesn’t know where to put all that energy!” she would say. “Everything is so new andexciting for her.”

Mirela was exuberant, and that was why she would grab the pen out of Lauren’s hand as she sat at the kitchen table marking up her All My Sons script, why she grabbed and tore at the pages, why she grabbed anything in anyone’s hand at any moment—Sean’s Game Boy, PJ’sSony Discman, the crossword or the can of Budweiser in Dad’s hand—in order to throw it or smash it or pound it into the floor.

“She’s learning how to share,” Mom said.

She was vivacious, and that was why she stumble-skipped up to every shopper in the supermarket, pawing at their coats and shoelaces, expressingher vivacity in loud, staccato vowels. She was lively, and that explained the constant motion, running, jumping, tripping over her own feet, spinning around and around until shecollapsed into a kicking heap. And everything was so new and exciting for her, and that was why there was so much screaming. Nana Dee presenting her with a Peaches ’n Cream Barbie made her scream. Thetaste and feel of the ordinary parts of dinner—the crumby scruff of a chicken nugget, a runny slice of tomato—made her scream.Anything soft and fluffy—a stuffed monkey, the fur on Midnight, the cat—made her scream. Walking down a flight of stairs madeher scream.

Bathtime was only screaming. Bathtime was the worst of all, by far. Mom would sit in the tub for hours