Sylvanus Now by Donna Morrissey Page B

the day?”
    Ivy faced her. “Think I’m just going to run off and leave everything?” she yelled defiantly.
    “Might as well for all you got done today.”
    Ivy pulled a sour face. “You stay home, then. See how much you gets done!”
    “Yeah, think she’s just going to run off and leave everybody?” snitted Janie from across the room. “I’m helping her look after them—if that’s all right with you,” she ended brazenly.
    Adelaide snorted, brushing a pile of clothes off a chair and sinking onto it. “You’ll take care of them, all right. From the looks of this place, it takes the two of ye to fold a pudding bag. Oh, don’t bother me,” she ended tiredly as Ivy started toward her, howling in protest.
    “And don’t you bother we, either,” yelled Janie.
    “Well, she’s always at us! ” said Ivy as her mother held up a fist of warning at Janie. “And I was taking Johnnie and Alf with me to the show, so it’s only the small ones Janie was looking after. Oh, what odds,” she ended in a wail, kicking a bundle of clothing aside, “I never get a chance to go anywhere.”
    “Big mouth,” said Janie, fishing a ratchet out of the drawer and glaring at Adelaide. “Perhaps you’re jealous and wants to go yourself.”
    “Mind now, Janie,” said Florry, “be none of ye going nowhere we don’t get this mess cleaned up. What’re you doing with the ratchet? You got something dropped down the sink? What you got dropped down the sink?”
    “We got nothing dropped down the sink,” both Janie and Ivy cried at once. “It’s just plugged, is all, like it always is,” continued Ivy, “and if we had hot water, we could run it down the drain and cut through the fat.”
    “Fat!” said Adelaide. “You got fat poured down the drain?”
    “I never said I poured fat down the drain! You never hears nothing I says. Everybody else is getting their houses wired. How come we’re not getting ours wired?”
    “Oh, for the love of the Lord, don’t bring up nothing else,” moaned Florry, sinking into her rocker and easing her feet out of her rubber boots. “Go out and find the youngsters, for gawd’s sake—go on, and no more saucing. Who’s that talking outside the window? Addie, take a look. Well, sir!” she exclaimed as Adelaide, her boots kicked off, rose and walked past the window without a glance. “Was that too much to ask—take a look through the window? Cripes! Go see, Janie, go see who’s outside the window. Janie? Well, sir, what’s she at!” she cried as Janie, halfway inside the cupboard by now, started hammering at the pipe with the ratchet. “Wait, hold on. That’s not how you uses it; name of gawd, it’s not a hammer! Get it from her, Addie, quick, before she breaks the pipe.”
    Adelaide was pouring hot water from the kettle into a faded plastic pan at the washstand. “Watch out!” she yelled as Ivy, hauling on a coat, barrelled past her, near causing her to lose her grip on the kettle. “Trying to bloody scald me,” she yelped, then huffed in exasperation as Ivy flung herself out the door, leaving it wide open behind her. “Born on a bloody raft,” she muttered, kicking it shut.
    Immediately the door popped open again, and thinking it was Ivy ducking back for a last retort, Adelaide drew in front of it, holding out the kettle threateningly. It was her father, Leamond. Still wearing his sou’wester, his jowls blackened by a month’s growth, and his eyes a brighter blue than she remembered, he stood squinting into the room as though he were still searching out horizons from the bow of a schooner.
    “Leam!” exclaimed Florry. “Well, sir, I thought ’twas you I heard out by the window. My gawd, Addie, stand aside and let him in. Sir, what’re you doing home middle of the month?” and kicking aside her rubbers, she lifted herself out of the rocker, skirting her way around the assorted piles of dirty clothes toward him. Adelaide stood aside as he edged his thick frame through