Free The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg Page A

have one, too.
    It is indeed late at night when they finally get to Aunt Peggy and Uncle Jim’s house, and after changing into her pajamas in the bathroom, Janey is shepherded quietly to her cousins Vicky and Doreen’s bedroom, to a cot beneath the window that has been made up in the very way she remembered: the linens are a summer day. Janey holds the fabric against her nose and falls asleep quickly. She dreams of riding in a car. Wheels turning and turning and turning, asphalt humming, radio stations coming in and fading out, the clouds a motion picture playing out for miles across the sky.
    In the morning, Janey awakens before Vicky and Doreen. She sees how they have changed: ten-year-old Vicky’s face has lost its baby fat, and her blond hair is very long; eight-year-old Doreen is much taller, and she, too, now has long hair. Janey tiptoes out of the room and heads F u l l C o u n t
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    downstairs; she can hear the voices of the boys in the kitchen, Michael’s in particular (so much lower now!), and she is eager to see him. She wants to ask what they’ll do that day but decides against her own presumptuousness; she’ll let him offer, and whatever he offers, she’ll say she wants to do.
    “Good morning!” Aunt Peggy says. She is in her robe, her hair in rollers, standing at the stove, where she is making pancakes. “Look who’s here!” she says to Michael and the six-year-old twins, Ben and Harry. Ben and Harry do not look alike at all, something that confounded Janey until her father explained the difference between frater-nal and identical. But they are all nice-looking children, and Janey sees that Michael has grown handsome, even manlike, and it makes her pull down on her pajama top and wish she had brushed her teeth.
    Aunt Peggy offers her a plate with three large pancakes stacked up tall. “Hope you’re hungry!” she says, and Janey is. She sits at the table and pours syrup over her pancakes, though the truth is that she prefers jelly on them. But this is travel: you accommodate yourself to others’ preferences.
    Michael stares at her, then looks away when she looks over at him. Janey smiles, then asks, “How is your summer going?”
    Oh, how the question hangs in the air. Finally, he shrugs and says, “Okay.” And then he smiles, and she feels better. She remembers now this period of awkwardness that she always goes through, her cousins looking at her like she is a rare zoo animal. But it passes quickly. Soon they will be comfortable with one another, and all the cousins will push en masse to be first for one of Uncle Ray’s perfectly burned hot dogs at the family picnic. Janey will spend time with this cousin and that during her visit, 66
    t h e d a y i a t e w h a t e v e r i w a n t e d but mostly she will be here, and she thinks now that maybe she will say something about the day, claim her place at Michael’s side.
    “What are you doing today?” she asks him.
    “Swimming!” Ben and Harry say, and Michael says,
    “Bampo’s taking us to the lake.”
    “All of us?” Janey asks, wondering how they’ll fit in Bampo’s car. They are used to sitting on one another’s laps, but still.
    “No, just us and Richie,” Michael says. “Richie always comes. He should just live in this family.”
    “Well, I think he’d miss his own, don’t you?” Aunt Peggy asks. She sits at the table with her own pancakes, cuts them into neat squares, and douses them with syrup.
    “I wish we weren’t out of bacon,” she says, and then, to Janey, “I’m sorry we’re out of bacon.”
    “Oh, I don’t mind,” Janey says and can feel herself blushing.
    “I seem to remember you really like bacon,” Aunt Peggy says, her mouth full. She swallows, then says,
    “Don’t you?”
    “I do, but . . . I don’t mind.” She puts her arm up to try to hide her already empty plate.
    Michael stands. “I’m going to get ready.”
    “Me, too.” Janey rises so hastily she scrapes her leg painfully against the