Read Online Till the End of Tom by Gillian Roberts - Free Book Online Page A

demand. “What’s up?” I asked when she was near.
    I waited to see what precious item she’d extracted from the trash this time, to hear the lecture on wasting not and wanting not, but her hands remained on the empty bucket’s handle. “Somebody has to do something,” she said gravely.
    “That’s pretty much always true. Want to be more specific?”
    She cleared her throat. “Don’t you get angry or anything.”
    Liddy did not generally concern herself with our potential reactions to her dictates. This, then, was troublesome. “I promise I won’t get angry.” I wondered what cleanliness infraction was this enormous.
    “You think they’re poisoning the kids?”
    I did a classic double take, sure I’d misheard. “Who? What do you mean, poison?” I hoped against hope this was not more Tom Severin aftershock.
    “The cafeteria.” She put down the pail and folded her arms over her chest. “Have there been complaints about the food?”
    “There are always complaints. Why?”
    “Because maybe kids—my girls—are being poisoned, that’s why.”
    “Miz Moffat, I appreciate your concern, but I don’t understand it.”
    She drew herself up taller, holding the mop as if it were a ceremonial sword. “That’s what I thought. Just wanted to be sure. So Miz Pepper, we have ourselves a mess of trouble. It gets fixed, or I leave.”
    And with that, she seemed to have said her piece. I waited, then finally confessed that I had no idea what she was talking about.
    “The
vomit,
” she said, as if of course I’d understand, as if vomit had been on my mind nonstop all day long.
    I’d thought I knew my problems, but here, Liddy said, was another. One I really did not want on my list of concerns.
    “In particular,” Liddy said, “the ones who don’t bother to get it into the toilet. You know they could. If they’re not dying, or poisoned, then it’s a sign of no respect, is all. I can’t take it no more. There are other jobs. Next time, I’m working in a geriatric ward. Or a boys’ school. Boys don’t do things like that.”
    “Back up. What things? Who’s sick?”
    “Nobody’s sick. If you say no poison, and I believe you—I only thought of that because of that dead man here. I heard on the news last night—”
    “Yes. I understand.” I could not bear one more retelling of yesterday’s news.
    “So I didn’t really think it could be the food, but I didn’t want it to be this stuff, that they’re throwing up on purpose so they won’t get fat. To be honest, I dread the period after lunch. Also makes me want to shake them silly—there’s people starving in this world, and they’re stuffing themselves and tossing it back. Dis-gusting!”
    “Has this been going on for a long time?” I felt like those people at disaster scenes, the people interviewed on TV who say things like, “I knew this happened, but to other people, not to us.” Of course I knew about bulemia and anorexia, about how frighteningly common eating disorders were among teens, how desperately they wanted to look “right,” whatever that meant to them, to fit in. But everyone at school looked so healthy, so normal.
    I felt a shudder of things missed, dangers unsuspected.
    “It isn’t that I’m lazy, or that I don’t know sometimes in my profession, you gotta deal with unpleasantness. But when it comes to people being that inconsiderate, I have my limits.” She planted her sturdy body even more securely, one fist now on her hips, the other still holding the mop like a staff and banner.
    I nodded. “Of course. Well, I’ll see what . . .” What? This was definitely out of my league and in fact, was in a league I didn’t want to join.
    Having vented, Liddy’s instinctive kindness asserted itself. “I don’t want them thrown out or anything. I understand how much they want to stay thin. Well, no. I don’t understand it really, but I know that’s how it is with girls today. Where I grew up, just getting food on the