Free The Good Lie by Robin Brande

that—probably from my mother when I was little—but it really seems to do
the job.
    So that’s what I did.  When I came
home from summer school that Friday, I set up my mixing station and went to
work.
    And like a cartoon stream of smoke,
where it turns into a finger and beckons you to follow, the scent of baking
cookies coiled out of the kitchen into Mikey’s room and brought him straight to
me.
    He stood in the doorway to the
kitchen and didn’t speak at first.  Then he burst into tears.
    “Honey, what’s wrong?” I asked,
dashing to his side.  I hugged him and patted his back while he wept the way he
hadn’t in years.  “Honey, tell me.”
    “I miss Mom,” he croaked.
    “Oh, honey,” I soothed, “poor
Mikey.”  I hugged him to me like a baby, and it felt good to be close to him.
    He continued to cry even when it seemed
he might stop.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.  “Tell me.”
    His voice warbled.  “No.”  He
swiped his sleeve over his eyes and pulledhimself together.
    I let him go but not entirely.  “You
should tell me,” I encouraged, even though telling was the very thing I was
wrestling with myself.
    “No.  Never mind.”  He turned
toward his room.  I let him go.
    When the first sheet was cooled I
brought him four warm cookies and a glass of milk.  He sat on his bed working a
handheld video game.  I sat beside him and propped myself against the wall.
    “I can kill him if you want,” I
started in, hoping, I think, to make him smile or at least react.
    “Who?”
    “Dad.”
    “Why?” Mikey asked.
    I left it alone.  Obviously he didn’t
want to talk to me about it.
    Mikey took a cookie from the plate
and dipped it in the milk.
    “You want to tell me why you were
crying?” I tried.
    Mikey shrugged.
    “Come on.  You can tell me.”
    Mikey shook his head. 
    I was really desperate now.  “Should
I call Mom for you?”
    “I don’t care.”  Mikey finished the
last cookie and wiped his hand on his pants.  He picked up his video game
again, but didn’t look at it.  He leaned his head against the wall and closed
his eyes.
    A tear slipped out, but just one.  “I
don’t like it here,” Mikey whispered.
    I caught my breath.  The moment was
as fragile as a spider’s web.  “Why?”
    Mikey shrugged.  The thin filament
snapped.  “I just don’t.”  He went back to his game.
    I sat with him a few more minutes
thinking my own part.  Then I patted his leg and stood up and went to the door
without looking back and I said, “Okay.  Thanks for  telling me.”
     
    [4]
    It wasn’t Mikey’s fault what
happened.
    My father did it out of
frustration, I think, because for over a week I had stood between him and his
boy, and the pressure was building.
    “Lizzie, time for bed,” my father
said that night.  “I want to talk to your brother.”
    “No.”  I stayed where I was on
Mikey’s bed.
    “No?  I told you to get out, young
lady.  Now go.”
    I tried not to let him see I was
nervous.  “Why?  What do you want him for?”
    “It’s none of your business.  Go to
your room.”
    My voice cracked.  “You’re sick. 
Stay away from him.”
    My father stiffened, as shocked as
I was that I had spoken so directly.  “I’m sick?”
    “Yes.”
    And something broke in him.
    “I’m sick?” he taunted.  He strode
over to me and poked me in the arm.  Hard.
    “Stop it.”
    “Is this sick?”  He poked the other
arm, then the first, then one after the other, back and forth, like plucking
out a tune on the piano.
    “Stop it!”  I jumped to my feet. 
My father followed me into the hall, prodding me in the back all the while.
    “Am I sick?  Am I sick?”
    I raced toward my bedroom.  My
father followed fast.  “Sick?” he kept shouting, and there was a cry at the end
of his voice.  “Sick?  Your father’s sick?”
    I leapt into my room and tried to
hold the door against him.
    “Sick?  Is this sick?”
    “Stop it!”
    He burst through and I