Read Online Hilda and Pearl by Alice Mattison - Free Book Online Page B

finished her library book and she didn’t know what to read. It was the last of the books she’d taken out that week.
    She went into her room, then into her parents’ bedroom, and lay down on their bed. She was cold, so she pulled the bedspread around her on both sides like a blanket. She knew she should take off her shoes, but she didn’t; she just held her feet upright so the soles didn’t touch the bed. She thought that Simon could have spent Saturday in a library, but that libraries were closed on Sunday. It was not raining. He could be outdoors somewhere, but she didn’t know where he could have gone at night. She wondered whether you could sneak into a department store and sleep in the beds at night. Maybe they had night watchmen who would discover you and have you arrested. Probably they did. Frances was thinking about that when she heard voices and she saw her father and Uncle Mike standing near the bed looking down at her. She realized that she had fallen asleep, because now she remembered dreaming that she was at school. Someone—the teacher or the principal—told her that her mother had come for her, and Frances had searched the school in increasing anxiety, looking for her mother. Finally she saw her mother through a glass panel in a classroom door. It was the kindergarten room, and some small kindergarten chairs had been arranged in a row for several mothers, who sat and watched the children. The children held hands and walked in a circle. It was like Open School Week, but Frances’s mother was watching the kindergarten children. Frances was unable to get her mother’s attention through the glass, and the door was locked. She knocked on the glass, but the teacher just looked up and frowned at her, and shook her head no.
    Her father and Uncle Mike were standing near the bed and looking at her, and they were both smiling just a little. She had never noticed how alike their smiles were. Both their mouths stretched sideways when they smiled, but did not turn up. “Did you find Simon?” she said.
    â€œNo,” said her father, and he looked sad again. Uncle Mike shook his head. Yet she felt that they had found something. They had found her, and that seemed to please them, but only a little—their smiles were tiny smiles. It was not that they had stopped caring about Simon. They reminded her of her mother and Aunt Pearl, and so she knew that they had not been fighting. She imagined them walking the streets, over and over again, searching, growing tired, falling against each other and leaning on each other’s shoulders.
    They were standing close together, that was it. And now her father put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Then the phone rang. Frances got off the bed. The dark pink bedspread, quilted satin, was rumpled, and she tried to straighten it. Her father and uncle had gone to the phone, and she heard her father’s voice say, “Hello?” and then, “He is? He’s there? Mike, he’s there. Thank God, thank God. Is he all right? You’re sure? Here, Pearl, talk to Michael,” and when she hurried into the living room, her father was sobbing and he took both her hands in his. “He’s all right, baby,” he said.
    â€œA friend?” Uncle Mike was saying. “Sammy? He never mentioned a Sammy. Who knew there was a Sammy? This Sammy, did he talk him into this? No, no, don’t worry.” He was shaking his head, denying what Pearl was saying. “I’m not going to do a thing, Pearlie, of course I wouldn’t hurt him. I just got him back. You think I’m going to do something to him? I’ll be right there. I’ll be home right away.”
    He hung up the phone and turned to Frances and her father, who were standing together. Nathan had his arm around Frances’s shoulders. “I can’t believe this,” Mike said. Frances thought he was going to give her father a hug and a kiss,