Free Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy Page B

out, he was nicer. He used his nice voice. It made the girls giggle. Everything he said and did, just picking up a card and frowning at it, struck them as really funny.
    Over the perfect fan of her cards their mother smiled. She kept winning, a surprise to the girls but not to her, and they realized that rummy must be something else, like sewing and tap-dancing, that she was secretly good at.
    “Mommy!” they cried, hugging her when she laid down her cards in neat rows, catching them all with mitts full.
    “Well, well,” their father said, his smile stopping at the edges of his mouth. The girls laughed. “Settle down,” he said nicely.
    They were having a great time. It was fun down here; it was like being in a fort. They played hearts next, and their mother went on winning, going for all the cards twice and getting them.
    Between deals their father started pacing. “There’s something going on,” he said, wagging his cigarette at them. “This is a trick on your old dad.”
    He wanted to play Scrabble, a game of every man for himself. Except that only four could play, so Sandy and their mother were a team.
    He went first and made the word
bounce.
That broke the three of them up. Their mother and Sandy made
tinkle,
which was even funnier. Norma used the
b
to make
bust.
They shrieked with laughter. Lou did
fuse,
and they couldn’t stand it, it seemed so funny.
    “Settle down,” their father said again. The vein that was like a fork of lightning down his forehead emerged—a danger sign—but they couldn’t stop laughing.
    It was his turn. Using the
k,
he made
kidny.
    “Alrighty,” he said enthusiastically, starting to add up his score. “Double word—”
    “What is it?” Lou asked.
    “Kidney,” he said. “An organ. Also a bean.”
    “But kidney’s got an
e!”
she cried.
    He scowled at the board. “No, it doesn’t.”
    “Well, it does,” their mother said. “K-i-d-n-e-y.”
    He laughed. “That’s the British spelling. I’m using the American.”
    Their mother shook her head. “I think there’s only the one way to spell it, Jim.”
    “Daddy, you can’t spell,” Sandy said tenderly. She couldn’t spell either.
    “Hey!” Lou cried, rearranging his letters. “You can make
dinky!”
    “Dinky!” Norma cried. They all three burst out laughing.
    He hit Lou with a backhand across the face. She fell sideways. Norma and Sandy jumped up and ran to the wall, Sandy crying. Their mother leaned over to grab the whisky bottle. He stood wearily, as if it was all over, but then he kicked the Scrabble board. It went shooting straight up, scattering letters, bent at the crease down the middle as if it would fly, and fell back to the floor, flat.
    Lou, on her feet now, was making leaps at the roof, trying to grab the stairs, which you pulled down.
    “The hatch is locked,” their father said matter-of-factly. He looked at his watch. “Nap time,” he said and began putting out the lights.
    Lou threw herself back on the floor. “I’m never going to get up,” she said in a passionate voice that persuaded her sisters. Their father stepped over her.
    The others went to the bunks. There were two bunks, Lou’s and Norma’s, on the end wall; one, Sandy’s, along the same wall as the toilet was; and two more, their mother’s andfather’s, on the wall across from the toilet. Their father climbed up to his bunk carrying a candle, which he held between his knees while he set the alarm clock, then blew it out.
    Black. And then that stench. This time all three girls smelled it. Lou imagined it was coming from under the shelter, beneath where she was lying. She started to shiver. The floor was cold and hard and bumpy with Scrabble letters. Her ear throbbed; it seemed huge, a Mouseketeer ear. In Disneyland, with her three bucks, she would have bought Mouseketeer ears.
    She got up on her knees and crawled over to where her bunk was, knowing the direction from their father’s snores. When she bumped into the