Read The Truth about Mary Rose for Free Online Page B

don’t.”
    “Grandma said they had to pry your fingers off it. You just wouldn’t let go. She said you didn’t cry or say anything or ask any questions, and she said the doctor said you were in a state of shock.”
    “I guess so,” he said. “I don’t remember.” Then he said he was going to buy some baseball tickets for the New York Mets game the next Wednesday night for Ray and himself, and did I think Manny would like to go along.
    “Definitely not,” I told him. “He hates baseball even more than my father does, but, Uncle Stanley ...”
    Uncle Stanley kept on talking about baseball, and how interested he always was in it, and how happy he was that now he had a nephew who liked to go to games with him, and that maybe he’d try to take a little time, and work out with Ray. He understood Ray was a great player ...
    I could see he didn’t want to talk about Mary Rose. And I could understand. If somebody died, saving your life, I suppose you’d never get over it. I think if it was me, I’d want to keep talking about her. I’d want to tell everybody I met how wonderful she was and how I missed her. But I could understand how somebody else might be suffering so much that he just couldn’t talk about it without falling apart. Especially somebody who wasn’t much of a talker anyway, like my Uncle Stanley.
    So I didn’t ask him the questions I wanted to ask. And I really wanted to ask him those questions. Because he was the only one who was there that night, and the only one who could really tell me what I didn’t already know.
    Pam was looking out of the window when we drove up the driveway. I know she saw me get out of the car, but she dropped the curtain, and moved away from the window so I shouldn’t think she was watching for me.
    “I didn’t think you were coming,” Aunt Claudia said. “Pam’s been acting like she doesn’t have a friend in the world.”
    My aunt turned her cheek when Uncle Stanley bent down to kiss her. So he kissed her cheek, but she didn’t kiss any part of him. My parents always kiss head on. It always looks funny to me when I see Uncle Stanley kissing Aunt Claudia.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked.
    “Don’t ask!” she said. “My ankles are so swollen, you can hardly see my feet.”
    “Well, why aren’t you lying down?”
    “Sure! And who’s going to give Margaret and Olivia their baths, and take out the dog, and straighten up ...”
    “Well, that’s what Norma is for.”
    “That girl doesn’t do any work unless you stand over her.”
    I went upstairs. Pam was in her room, but the door was open. Next room, the door was closed, and behind it came the sounds of Jeanette’s violin. Usually when Jeanette was playing her violin, Pam had her door closed. So I knew she knew I was here because the door was open.
    “Hi, Pam,” I said.
    “Oh—Mary Rose? I didn’t think you were coming,” she said, acting cool, like she didn’t care.
    “I didn’t come because of you,” I told her. “I came because of the baby mouse.”
    “Oh, Mary Rose, wait till you see him,” Pam said. She reached into the Mouse House, and brought him out, and handed him over to me. He was a wonderful little white fur mouse with a tiny blue ribbon around his neck, and little black eyes and a black pointy nose. He was smaller than the mother and father mouse or the big sister mouse.
    Pam had two other doll houses. One was a Japanese doll house with a family of Japanese dolls, and the other was an old Victorian Mansion doll house with an old-fashioned-looking family. The Mouse House was something Pam had made herself, and that I had been helping her decorate. The rooms were made out of different sized boxes that you could always move around. Pam, who was on to macramé, had made macramé bedspreads, curtains and wall hangings for all the rooms. She had used walnut shells and anchovy tins for beds, and lined them with pieces of material. I had painted a mural on the bathroom wall—three