Midnight Whispers (Cutler 4)

"Aunt Fern, don't tease her."

Fern took another gulp from her gin and tonic and laughed.

"Morty," she called. "You've got to come out and see this. You won't believe it. Morty!"

"Put him back! Please, put him back," Aunt Charlotte begged, stepping faster.

Morton came out of the sitting room where he had been drinking and relaxing and looked up.

"Let's play monkey-in-the-middle," Aunt Fern declared and held up the doll for Morton to see. Aunt Charlotte reached out for it and Aunt Fern threw the doll down to Morton, who caught it.

"STOP!" Charlotte cried, her palms pressed against her temples.

"Aunt Fern, how could you do that?" I turned and started toward Morton, who was smiling up at Fern. "Give me the doll, please," I pleaded. He laughed and just as I reached him, tossed it back up to Fern. She dropped it, but before Charlotte could get to it, Fern scooped it up and threatened to throw it back to Morton.

Charlotte screamed again. Fern giggled and charged away. I looked at Aunt Charlotte's face and saw the pain and fear in her eyes. In her mind once again someone was taking away her baby, I thought. How dreadful and how cruel of Fern to do something so obviously painful to Aunt Charlotte.

"Aunt Fern," I called and stormed up the stair-way. I chased after her with Charlotte right behind me. But when we turned the corner at the end of the corridor, she was nowhere in sight.

"Where is she? Where has she taken the baby?" Aunt Charlotte asked.

"Aunt Fern?"

We heard giggling to the right and started slowly in that direction. But before we reached the doorway of the room Aunt Fern was hiding in, we heard the glass she was carrying shatter on the floor and then we heard her scream. A moment later Homer appeared with the doll cradled in his arms as if he were carrying a real baby. He walked over to Charlotte and gingerly transferred the doll into her arms. She stroked its head and face gently and then headed for the nursery.

"What's he doing here!" Aunt Fern demanded from the doorway. "He scared the hell out of me."

Homer turned and glared furiously at her.

"I told you to keep him out of the house," Aunt Fern said. "He popped out of nowhere and grabbed that stupid doll out of my hands."

"It's all right, Homer," I said. "Everything's all right. Go on back to the others." He continued to stand there, his eyes fixed hatefully on Fern, his large hands clenched into mallets. "Go on, Homer," I said more firmly. He looked at me and then turned and headed away.

"Where the hell did he come from?" Aunt Fern asked, strutting toward me bravely now that Homer had gone.

"He must have heard Aunt Charlotte's scream and climbed in through a window," I said. "Why did you do that, Aunt Fern? You could see how much it bothered her."

"Well, what is she, nuts? At her age crying over a doll?"

"It's the doll she had when she was a little girl," I said. "It means a lot to her."

"Weird," Aunt Fern declared. "This whole place and everyone in it." Her face was swollen with anger and frustration. She didn't like being forced to stop teasing Charlotte and me. She was indignant and embarrassed.

"Why don't we just leave, Fern," Morton said. He had heard the commotion and had come up the stairs behind us.

"No," Fern replied. She was fuming, her eyes hot, the tips of her ears red. She hated to be thwarted and defeated and she was going to get her revenge somehow. "We bought all that food and all this booze to have a good time here, and we will," she said with determination. She fixed her eyes on me. I had become her whipping boy.

"Let's begin by fixing up that living room downstairs. I want to have a party tonight. Get the floor swept, the windows washed and the furniture polished."

"Fern, let's just leave," Morton implored. Why didn't he just demand? I wondered. What sort of a man was he? How did she get men wrapped up so tightly in her grip? How did she get so firm a hold over them? Was it just the promise of sex? Morton was the one with the car and the money, but Fern decided everything.

"Relax, Morty," she said, calming down and returning that icy smile to her face. "First, we'll have a great dinner and then Christie will give us a concert. After that, we'll play some games . . . one of the games you like," she told him coyly. Whatever she was promising him, pleased him, for he smiled and then laughed.

"Okay," he said.

"Then it's all settled. Get working on the living room, princess. We want to have a good time tonight, don't you?"

"None of us will have a good time as long as you tease and torment people here, Aunt Fern," I told her.