The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter by Holly Robinson

Author:Holly Robinson [Robinson, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-45982-4
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2009-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

were chores to do than hours in a day. As Mom put it, “This house has been really abused. There are lots of loose things about it.” Like the settlers who had made similarly arduous journeys to stake a claim, we used hard work as a salve for grief and loss.

While Dad spent weekdays in New York, teaching at the Merchant Marine Academy, the rest of us peeled off old wallpaper, patched and painted walls, yanked up stained carpeting, and scraped layers of yellow enamel off the stair railings. We brightened the dark kitchen paneling with white paint and hung wallpaper in places where the house would have fallen apart without that extra gluey layer holding it together.

One Friday, I came home from school and interrupted Mom in the middle of taking down an entire wall with a crowbar. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” she declared, wiping plaster dust off her cheek. “There’s nothing like a little demolition to relieve stress.”

“What are you so worried about, Mom?” I asked.

She glanced at the clock. “Your father’s due back from New York any minute, and you know he’ll find something to criticize.”

Mom put down the crowbar, went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. She took two Alka-Seltzer tablets out of her jeans pocket and dropped them into the glass. “Plop plop, fizz fizz,” she said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and gulped down the contents of the glass just as we heard Dad’s car pull into the driveway.

“Holly! Donald! Where are you?” Dad shouted as he came up the basement stairs, running as usual.

“Welcome home, dear,” Mom said as Dad threw open the door and heaved his duffel bag full of the week’s laundry off his shoulder and onto the floor.

Dad’s smile was like Mom’s: half grimace. He nodded at me and said, “Go get your brother and clean out my car. Now.”

“Yes, sir.” I ran down the basement stairs and found Donald in the workshop with Grandfather, gluing the spindles back into an old chair that Grandfather had found by the side of the road. “Dad’s home,” I said.

“O Captain! my Captain!” Grandfather said.

“We have to clean out the car,” I said. “Right now, or he’ll be mad. You know how he is.”

“Why do we have to do it every Friday? It’s his mess,” Donald grumbled, but he followed me out to the driveway.

By the time we came back inside, Dad had changed out of his Navy uniform and was squinting at the new blue-and-white kitchen wallpaper that Mom and Grandfather had put up that week, a tumbler of scotch in one hand. “Looks about an eighth of an inch off to me,” he pronounced. “That’s a shame, considering what wallpaper costs a roll. I hope you got it on sale.”

Grandmother came downstairs to join us in the kitchen, a flowered apron tied around her tweed skirt. “I baked you an apple pie, Robbie,” she said.

“Thank you, Mother, but there was really no need.

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