The Leopard Is Loose by Stephen Harrigan

Author:Stephen Harrigan [Harrigan, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

When we got home, Danny and I were so anxious to get out of our Sunday outfits we almost ripped them off. The harsh wool fabric was suddenly so unbearable, now that the end was in sight, that I danced around the living room in torment like someone who had stepped in an anthill.

“Stop those theatrics!” Bethie said, as she held me still so that she could slide off my junior sport coat without me tearing off the sleeves. “I can’t believe what spoiled children you are.”

It didn’t do any good for us to protest about our clothes, about what agony they were. She didn’t care and she wouldn’t listen.

“There are plenty of children,” she said, with a logic that completely eluded us, “who would give anything to have such nice clothes.”

She went into our room, opened the dresser, and returned with two identical striped T-shirts and red short pants with elastic waists.

“I don’t want to wear the same thing as Grady,” Danny protested.

“I don’t care what you want, young man. This is what you’re going to wear.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your mother and I like it when you dress alike. What difference does it make to you?”

“What difference does it make to you?”

“Don’t you dare talk back to me, Danny, or I’ll give you a swat with the spatula. Is that what you want?”

She said this without any threatening inflections in her voice, so we knew she wasn’t serious, just impatient. A little back talk was not a major infraction, not like ignoring her or even taunting her when she was already near tears after an exhausting day, or during the times—I realize now—when she felt vulnerable and lonely and was sunk in thoughts about the past and what she had lost. In any case, we didn’t really fear a half-hearted swat or two from the metal spatula in the utility drawer. It was just something that we had agreed upon, for her sake, to pretend to respect.

She went into her bedroom to change clothes and came out dressed in her nurse’s uniform.

“I want you boys to stay with your grandparents till I get back from work,” she said, as she picked up her purse and surveyed the apartment, looking for last-minute things to tidy up. By that time Frank and Emmett had appeared at the front door. Part of the Sunday routine was for them to drive Bethie to her shift at the hospital, for Danny and me to go along, and then for our uncles to take us someplace like the zoo. But the zoo was closed today because of the leopard, so we were facing a long afternoon of staying at home.

Something else was different. I saw it in the way Bethie looked at her brothers as she walked with them to the car—or, more to the point, didn’t look at them. Frank’s hostile performance in my grandparents’ living room the day before, his sloppy attempts during our bedtime last night to make it all right, and Emmett’s

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