Free Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg

Well. I’d better stop here. I’d better go and take a walk, despite the rain. Gosh, it rains a lot here. I’ll write more as soon as I can.
    All my love,
    Michael
             
    P.S.
Say, sweetheart, if you get a chance, go and see my mother, will you? She’s not been well and could use the company. Assure her that I’m fine now and
will continue to be—
Dad says she’s got an eye permanently trained on the front walk, fearful of the telegram. If anyone can take her mind off things, you can.
             
    Kitty swallowed. Folded the pages tenderly. Put them back into the envelope. Used the toilet, as long as she was there. Washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She was a black-haired girl who didn’t know anything. A girl who’d betrayed her sister, never mind that spiderweb she’d promised God to clean away tomorrow. How could God have any time to listen to her now? Prayers must be shooting up to Him as fast and furious as a Fourth of July fireworks finale, times a million. Times a billion. More.
    She had a different idea for penance. Monday, during her lunch hour, she’d run over to Field’s and put a Montgomery beret on layaway for Louise—her sister loved those hats and she’d look fine in it. Well, all the sisters would. But Louise would wear it first, and Kitty would take her picture in it, and Louise could send the picture to Michael. As for now, she’d put the letter back in the drawer, then wake up Louise and give her the ring. She’d bring her back to the bathroom for a private ceremony.
             
    KITTY CREPT INTO THE BEDROOM and successfully replaced the letter. She breathed out a quiet sigh of relief, then pulled open her own drawer. She put the ring box in her pocket, tiptoed across the room, and stood next to her sleeping sister. “Hey?” she whispered. “Louise?” She tapped her on the shoulder and Louise started, then cried out.
    “Shhhhh!”
Kitty motioned for her sister to follow her.
    “What do you want?” Louise whispered. “I’m
tired
! Tell me tomorrow.”
    Kitty motioned more emphatically for Louise to come with her.
    “Oh, all right!” Louise sat up and pushed her feet into her slippers. She pulled her robe off the chair and put it on, tying it neatly at the side of her waist. Kitty crossed her arms, clamped her teeth together, and waited. No point in trying to rush her. Louise had to get dressed for everything. Even as young girls in the middle of summer, they could never just fly out of the house barefoot and carefree—Louise would need to put on her shoes, and the laces had to be tied evenly. She would have to put bows at the bottoms of her braids. She’d have to step out onto the porch and test the weather to see if she needed a sweater.
    Tish was always ready for action—she’d fly out of the house bare naked—but she was the baby. Nobody wanted the baby sister along, but there she always was. Sometimes Kitty and Louise, weary of caring for Tish, were cruel to her. As seven- and five-year-olds, they had taken scissors to Tish’s curls as she lay sleeping, for they believed Tish’s bright blond hair, so different from their own, was being too much admired. The wagon they were pulling her in would “accidentally” overturn. They would tell her they were playing hide-and-go-seek outside, then sneak inside the house to escape her, giggling as they watched Tish standing beneath the towering elm that was home base, calling around the thumb in her mouth, “I give
up,
now! Come
in,
now. Alley, alley in fwee!” Why must you treat her so? Ma would ask. She’s your baby sister! And Kitty and Louise would look at each other and struggle to keep from laughing. Exactly. She was a stupid
baby.
    And now here came that baby sister’s voice, thick with sleep. “What are you guys doing? What’s the matter?”
    “Nothing,” Kitty said. “Go back to sleep.”
    Tish rose up on one elbow, blinked, and then let her head fall heavily back