When he started to say something else, she pulled away.
They walked back to the house together, the children talking about the fishing, but it wasn’t the same as it had been since the adults were now silent.
At the house, Carrie set the table and served Mrs. Emmerling’s bean soup with freshly baked bread.
“Can we go fishing again tomorrow?” Tem asked.
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Josh said in a heavy voice.
At those few innocent words, Tem looked back at his bowl and Dallas burst into tears.
This burst of grief made Carrie feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. “What is so dreadful about Sunday? You children couldn’t hate church that much, could you?”
“We don’t go to church,” Josh said gloomily, pulling Dallas onto his lap and drying her tears.
Suddenly it was all too much for Carrie. She slammed her fist onto the table. “I’ve had it! I’ve had all the secrets I can take. I demand that someone tell me what is so awful about Sunday.”
Looking as though he were going to cry too, Tem said, “Uncle Hiram comes to our house for dinner on Sunday and he makes everyone sad.”
“A dinner guest doesn’t sound like such a tragedy. And I doubt if he can make us sad if we don’t allow him to.”
“You don’t understand,” Josh said softly. “There are things that you don’t know about. Our…welfare, our being together as a family depends on Hiram’s good nature.” Josh nearly choked on the last words.
“I see,” Carrie said tightly. “And of course you don’t plan to tell me any more than that, do you?” She waited, but Josh said nothing more. “All right, then I won’t ask. Does your brother like food?”
Dallas giggled.
“Does that mean he does like food?”
At that Tem got up from the table, blew out his cheeks to make them look fat, held his hands out in front of him as though he had an enormous stomach, and began to walk like a very fat man. “What is this, little brother?” Tem said in a deep voice. “Something else you cooked? Maybe some worms from that field of yours? Ha! Ha! Ha! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you do anything right? Look at me. Use me as an example of how a man should be. I know right from wrong. I decided right from wrong.”
Dallas was laughing and Josh was smiling, but Carrie was staring at Tem in wonder, because she was sure that his parody of a man she’d never met was perfect. From Tem’s impersonation, she could see this man as clearly as though Tem had grown two feet taller and gained a couple of hundred pounds.
She turned to Josh. “He’s quite good, isn’t he?”
He set Dallas on the floor and raised one eyebrow as though to say, If you think that’s something, watch this. “Be a duck,” he said.
Carrie watched, at first in wonder, then in uncontrolled mirth as Dallas imitated a duck. Imitated it perfectly. Dallas put her head back to preen her feathers, pointed her feet outward, even twitched her tail when her duck rose from the water.
Not to be outdone by his little sister, Tem became a cow. Then Dallas did a chicken. Tem couldn’t bear his sister getting so much attention so he began circling her, and within minutes they had become two dogs at first meeting.
Abruptly, Tem stood upright, his shoulders back, and gave Dallas a stern look. “I will not laugh, Miss Moneybags,” he said in a deep voice. “We are a serious family.”
Right away Carrie knew that Tem was mimicking his father—he even had Josh’s posture down, that proud walk of his, that jaw that could be so inflexible.
Dallas stepped in front of her brother, and when she looked up at him, her lashes fluttered. She had gone from being a little girl to being a sexy, flirtatious woman. “Dishes,” she said, falsetto. “I do declare they are dirty. We shall leave them and when we return the Good Fairy will have cleaned them.”
Carrie was a little afraid that Dallas was imitating her, but she was sure when she heard Josh laugh out loud. Giving him a look over her shoulder that said, Laugh too hard and you will regret it, she turned back to the children.
Carrie was amazed at them, truly amazed as she watched them enact a hilarious parody of her and Josh. They argued over the most insignificant things, making Carrie and Josh laugh in a nervous sort of way. But it was when the children started imitating how Carrie and Josh reacted when they touched each other that the adults began to clear their throats.
“You have touched my arm!” Tem said. “I cannot bear it. I must hold you, kiss you.” Putting the back of his hand to his forehead, all the while pulling Dallas toward him, he looked like a man in great agony. “But no, I mustn’t. I cannot touch you.”
“Oh, please touch me, my big handsome man. Please,” Dallas said, looking up at Tem with adoring eyes.
Carrie turned to Josh. “Your children are brats.”
“I thought they were our children.”