A Figure of Speech by Norma Fox Mazer

Author:Norma Fox Mazer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

Chapter 13

One night, having crept out of bed to use the bathroom, Jenny saw a light on in the kitchen and found Grandpa there, wrapped in a blanket, drinking tea. It was two in the morning. “Jenny” he said. She sat down with him. His health was improving. He now resisted her mother’s efforts to keep him in bed or in the Boston rocker all day. Instead he shuffled slowly around the house, holding onto walls and furniture. At supper the night before last, Mrs. Pennoyer had said that she had never felt as tied down: she didn’t dare step out of the house even for five minutes because she worried so about Grandpa. What if something should happen to him? What if he started another fire? She’d never forgive herself, she said.

“Have some tea,” Grandpa said to Jenny. He poured hot water from the kettle into a cup, spilling a little. His mouth moved soundlessly.

Jenny put a napkin on the spill and watched the paper blot up the water. “Can’t you sleep, Grandpa?” She dunked her teabag up and down, then heaped in the sugar.

“Just restless,” he sighed.

Jenny put her hand over his. “Grandpa—” What could she say to bring him comfort? They’d taken away his home, and she couldn’t give it back to him.

The next night Grandpa was afoot again. Mr. Pennoyer, lying in bed, heard someone move stealthily around the house and thought it was an intruder. “Who’s there?” he called, and leaping out of bed he banged into a chair, swore at the top of his voice, and woke most of the family. When he found out that the “intruder” was Grandpa, who looked astonished at all the noise, Mr. Pennoyer was furious. In the morning he was tired and irritable.

“You prowl around like that often, Pop?” he said, rattling the morning paper.

“Nights I can’t sleep, yes, I get up, walk around, try not to disturb anybody,” Grandpa said. He was slowly chewing a piece of dry toast.

“I don’t want you to do that anymore,” Mr. Pennoyer said. “If you can’t sleep at night you can sleep all day, but other people aren’t so lucky. Other people have to go to work and need their rest. You get the message, Pop? You stay in bed at night where you belong.”

“Well, I get restless, and my bones ache—can’t sleep so good—”

“Count sheep,” Gail said.

“I’m going to make sure you get a glass of hot milk before bedtime,” Mrs. Pennoyer said. “It’ll make you drowsy.”

“I don’t see anything so terrible about Grandpa getting up sometimes in the night,” Jenny said.

“The radio,” Mr. Pennoyer said, snapping his fingers. “That’ll do the trick for you, Pop.” The radio was Mr. Pennoyer’s own transistor set with a plastic earplug. “Instead of getting out of bed when you can’t sleep, Pop, lie still and listen to the radio. I do it when I’ve got something on my mind, and it has a nice soothing effect. So long as you keep that earplug in, no one will even know you’ve got the thing turned on.

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