All Fall Down Read online

  “For what? Did you kill her?”

  Sunny looked again at the sky. “Nobody killed her. She didn’t die. She left, to go through the gates. It’s a good thing. You should be happy about it.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m not. Are you? Really?”

  “No,” Sunny whispered without looking at him.

  He started down the stairs. Sunny went after him. He turned to look at her, one hand held up as though she’d tried to grab him, when she hadn’t even made a move to touch him at all.

  “Don’t.”

  “You should tell your wife not to be sad,” Sunny said.

  “I won’t tell her anything. All of this is bad enough, I won’t tell her any sort of crazy talk.” The old man’s lip curled. His eyes opened wide. He stabbed a finger at her. “And don’t go getting any ideas, either. About coming around. We don’t know you. You’re nothing, you hear me? You’re not anything to us! So don’t you think you can come around and stir up a lot of old memories.”

  This time when he walked away, Sunny didn’t go after him. The door opened behind her. Chris, eyes and nose red, jerked his chin toward the old man getting in his car across the parking lot.

  “What did he want?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I was trying to tell him not to be sad, but he didn’t want to listen.”

  “He never liked me very much,” Chris said. “I’m not surprised he wasn’t nice to you. He should’ve been, though. I’m sorry, Sunny.”

  She looked at him, surprised that he could take blame for something that had nothing to do with him. “Why?”

  Chris looked surprised, too. “Because…he’s your grandfather. He’s your family. He should be happy you’re here.”

  “Are you happy that I’m here?”

  “Of course I am.” He put a hand on her shoulder, strong fingers squeezing. Sunny thought he would pull her close for a hug, but he didn’t. He released her with a sharp nod, as though they’d shared something significant.

  Maybe they had.

  Chapter 12

  The doll’s name is Baby-Wets-a-Lot. Grammy sent it for Liesel’s birthday. Mom laughs at the bright pink package, and when Liesel pulls out the pack of special diapers, she makes a face.

  “Just what we need, right? More pee-pee and poo-poo? Hey, Liesel, Mommy has a real Baby-Wets-a-Lot right here.” She hikes baby Robbie higher on her hip. “Any time you want to change a diaper—”

  “These are special diapers,” Liesel says.

  “Believe me,” Mom says, “your brother’s are pretty darned special, too.”

  Robbie needs feeding and a nap, so Mom leaves Liesel and Gretchen to coo over Baby-Wets-a-Lot’s cute little outfits and her special bottle that you fill with water to feed her so she pees. Gretchen has lots of doll babies, but Liesel grew out of them a couple years ago. At least, she thought she did, but faced with the excitement of a doll with real bodily functions, she discovers a newly maternal desire.

  “Let’s put her in my carriage,” Gretchen suggests. “We can take Baby for a walk in the yard!”

  Liesel shakes her head. “Her name’s not Baby.”

  “It is! Mommy said so!”

  “Nope.” Liesel really likes to tease Gretchen, who’s only two years younger but still acts like worse of a baby than Robbie sometimes. “Her name’s…Prunella.”

  Gretchen wrinkles her nose. “That’s a bad name.”

  Liesel makes a shocked face and cradles Prunella against her. “Shh! Don’t hurt her feelings!”

  It’s just a silly doll, but Gretchen will believe it has feelings. She still talks to her stuffed animals and arranges them every morning on her bed. She pets them, or in the case of the plastic ponies, brushes their hair while she sings to them. Grammy really should’ve sent Gretchen the doll.

  But she didn’t. Prunella belongs to Liesel. Gretchen frowns and crosses her arms, but there’s nothing she can do about it. Liesel takes Prunella out into the yard anyway, under the big shady tree. There she takes off the doll’s dress. She and Gretchen marvel at the doll’s plastic nipples. Then at the small hole between the doll’s legs.

  “That’s where the pee comes out.” Gretchen sounds amazed.

  Liesel already filled the bottle with water. They take turns feeding Prunella, until a minute or two later, the diaper gets wet and soggy. Then they change it. That’s fun for about another minute, but then Liesel’s bored. They go inside the house to get some lemonade, because that will make the pee yellow.

  “I think we should make her poop.” Liesel whispers this with glee, but Gretchen looks horrified.

  It doesn’t really matter, because Liesel can get Gretchen to do anything she wants her to. That’s how Liesel makes her sister climb up into the cupboard to get the box of chocolate pudding. They mix it up together in Liesel’s bedroom while Mommy is taking a nap with Robbie.

  The “poop” goes in, but it doesn’t come out.

  “Maybe she needs more to drink.” Gretchen fills the bottle with more lemonade. They force it into Prunella’s mouth.

  They wait.

  And then…

  “Poooooop!”

  It dribbles out of the tiny hole in Prunella’s butt and into the diaper. Gretchen and Liesel dare each other to taste it, and Liesel sticks a finger in it. She chases Gretchen down the hall, both of them screaming, until Mommy comes out of her bedroom with that face on. The one that means they’re in trouble.

  Liesel doesn’t find the doll again until a few weeks later, under her bed, and only then because of the smell. She sneaks it into the garbage when her mother is busy with Robbie. Prunella’s ruined, and even though Liesel doesn’t like dolls very much anymore, she cries when she stuffs stinky, moldy Prunella under the banana peels and eggshells and coffee grounds. It was the last time she’d played with a doll or changed a diaper until Becka’s kids came along.

  Now, Liesel held a squirming, sobbing infant who refused to be soothed no matter what she did. She’d changed Bliss’s diaper, rocked her, tried to give her water, since that was all she had. Sunny had agreed to leave the baby behind when she went with Christopher to the morgue, but had seemed appalled at the suggestion Liesel give Bliss some formula while she was gone. Liesel understood breast-feeding was natural and everything, but it didn’t do her much good with Bliss red-faced and furious from hunger. The other two kids had settled happily enough in front of the television in the den with bowls of dry cereal, but the baby was inconsolable.

  “Shh,” Liesel said. “Shh, shh.”

  She tried to remember a lullaby her mom had sung to her, but all she came up with was a slowed-down and way less falsetto version of Prince’s “Kiss.”

  The wailing didn’t even turn Happy’s or Peace’s little heads, but it was starting to set Liesel’s jaw on edge. She sang under her breath as she paced in front of the living room window, bouncing the baby in her arms until, finally, Bliss collapsed in exhaustion against her. Then she pressed her lips to the baby’s soft head and breathed in. She expected the sweet baby smell of powder and wipes, but coughed instead on the sour stink of a dirty diaper and unappeased fury.

  It reminded her of that long-ago doll she’d tossed aside under the bed in favor of other games. Liesel gathered the boneless, sleeping baby closer instinctively, though she’d never told anyone what she’d done with that doll and there wasn’t anyone here to judge her anyway.

  Christopher pulled into the driveway. Minutes later, Sunny came into the kitchen, then through to the living room. Liesel wouldn’t have thought the girl would have many smiles after identifying her dead mother, but Sunny’s face beamed when she held out her hands for her daughter.

  “How was everything?” she asked.

  Liesel’s bruises still ached, and the unac