"Cooney, Caroline B - Janie Johnson 02 - Whatever Happened to Janie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cooney Caroline B)

"Don't talk like that once she comes," warned their father. Dad was wildly excited. He and Mom kept bursting into shouts of laughter and hugging each other and hyperventilating~ That was Jodie~s new word.hyperventllate. Jodle did not want her family getting overly emotional, or too noisy. She felt it was time to drop the handholding at dinner and the saying of grace. Jennie would think they were weird. "Don't hyperventilate," Jodie begged constantly. But her family was the hyperventilating kind.
When Mom thought nobody was watching, she would rearrange the dining table, seeing where the seventh chair fit best. The chair her missing daughter would sit in when she came home. Then Mom would do a little tap dance around the chair, fingertips on the wood. She looked so comic, a fortythreeyearold, getting heavy, going gray, wearing sneakers that squeaked on the linoleum instead of tapping.
"We'll all have to work hard," Mom warned every night. "Jennie's grown up with another family. Different values, I suppose. This won't be easy." Mom burst into laughter. not believing a word of it. This was her baby girl. It would be easy and joyful. "We may have a hard time adjusting." she added,
This was for Stephen's benefit. Stephen was not a great adjuster.
Jodle planned to be the buffer between Jennie and Stephen. Jodle knew that she would not have
problems. This was the sister with the matching J name. They would be like twins.
Brian and Brendan never noticed much of anything except each other and their own lives. Jodie thought it was such a neat way to live, wrapped up and enclosed with this secret best friend who went with you everywhere and was part of you.
That was how she would be with Jennie.
At night, when they were each in their own beds, with only a thin little table and a narrow white telephone to separate them, they would tell each other sister things. Jennie would tell Jodie details about the kidnapping that she had never told anybody. And Jodie would share the secrets of her life:
aches and hurts and loves and delights she had never managed to confess to Nicole or Caitlin.
Jodie was cleaning her bedroom as it had never been cleaned before. Nicole and Caitlin said it was impossible to share a room this small. Two beds had been squeezed in, one tall bureau and one medium desk. Another person could never fit in her share of sweaters, earrings, cassettes, and shoes. Jodie was seized with a frenzy of energy, folding and refolding her clothing until it took up only half the space it used to; discarding left and right; putting paper grocery bags stuffed with littleused items In the attic.
She had spent her allowance on scented drawerliner paper from Laura Ashley. It was a lovely, delicate Englishlooking pattern. Its soft perfume filled the room like a stranger. Jennie would be pleased.
Mom loved matching names. Jodie and Jennie
went together. Of course the twins, Brian and Brendan, went together. Stephen was the oldest, and Mom and Dad had always meant to have a sixth child, who would be named Stacey whether it was a boy or a girl. So there'd have been Jodie and Jennie, Stephen and Stacey, Brian and Brendan.
Of course, after Jennie went missing, nobody could consider another baby. How could any of them ever have left the room again? Nobody could have focused their eyes anywhere else again. They'd all have had heart attacks and died from fear that somebody would take that baby, too.
Jennie was only twenty months younger than Jodie. As toddlers they had fought, Jodie pairing up with Stephen. Over the years, Jodie had thought of this a lot. If she, Jodie, had been holding Jenme's hand at the shopping mall the way she was supposed to, nobody could have kidnapped Jennie.
When she got to know this new sister, should she say she was sorry? Admit that it was her fault? If the new sister said, don't worry, everything's fine now, I'm home and happy. Jodie would be safe telling about her guilt. But if the new sister said, I hate you for it, and I've always hated you for it-what then?
Jodie put the hand mirror that said J E N N I E down on the piece of lace she had chosen to decorate the top of the bureau.
Jodle's mother loved things with names on them. The four kids had mugs, sweatshirts, bracelets, book bags, writing paper-everything-with their names printed or embroidered or engraved. Mom wanted to have a house full of J E N N I E items
for the homecoming. It was a popular name. They had had no trouble at the mall finding tons of stuff that said Jennie. They bought so much they were embarrassed. "We'll have to bring it out one piece at a time," said Jodie, giggling.
"She'll know we love her," said Jodie's mother. But behind the hyperventilating and the laughter lay the years of worry.
Mom was trembling. She had been trembling for days. She was actually losing weight from shivering. You could see her hands shake. Nobody had commented on it because everybody else had shivers, too. Everybody was worried about everything. What to serve for dinner on the first night? What to say to the neighbors? How to take Jenme to school. How to hug.
Would she be afraid? Would she be funny? Would she be shy? What would she be like-this sister who had grown up somewhere else?
Jodie opened her bureau drawers and looked at the empty halves, She was so proud of herself, opening up her life, just like a drawer, to take Jenate in.
I have a sister again, thought Jodie Spring. She isn't buried. She isn't gone. She wasn't hurt. Her guardian angel did take care of her. And now he's bringing her back to us.
Tomorrow.
CHAPTER
2.
The bedroom in Connecticut was a beautiful, sunny room, from which Janie Johnson had led a beautiful and sunny life. The leftovers of her childhood enthusiasms filled every shelf: the horsebackriding ribbons from fourth grade; the silver flute and the wooden music stand from sixth; the pompons and trophy from seventhgrade cheerleading.
Janie's mother stared at the room as if she were touring a castle In Europe; as if impossibly distant people had once lived bizarre and unimaginable lives in this room.
But it was their own world that had turned out to be bizarre and unimaginable.
Janie tried to hug her mother, but Mrs. Johnson, the huggingest of people, stepped back. She actually brushed Janie away. "I can't go through any more," whispered her mother. Mrs. Johnson did not look at her daughter, but at the room. The room was all she would have left.
'Don't be mad at me, Mommy," pleaded Janie. How could she go on living if her mother hated her?
Janie felt like a very little girl who needed to sit on her mother's lap.
"I'm not your mother," said Mrs. Johnson In a suspended voice, as If she were being hanged.
Since the truth had come out, Miranda Johnson's elegance had frayed away; she was literally coming apart at the seams. She picked at the pockets and hems of her clothing, unraveling herself.
For Miranda Johnson, motherhood was twice destroyed. Hannah, lost in the remote past, had ruined the present as well.
"You are so my mother!" Janie felt as if her body were going to turn inside out, the way their lives had been turned inside out. Why on earth had she agreed to live with the Springs? Why had she not fought and screamed and refused?
Lawyers had carefully explained that since Janie was not quite fifteen years old-the Johnsons had guessed the baby's age wrong; she was a whole year younger than everybody had thought-she was a minor, and must obey her parents. And her parents were not Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. Her parents were Mr. and Mrs. Spring, who wanted her home. In their house. In their state.
How romantic it had seemed that first week. Real family emerges from shadowy past! Girl discovers bizarre kidnapping, unknown even to the kidnappers!
But it was not romantic. It was the brutal collapse of the woman and man she called Mommy and Daddy.
Janie's friends had long ago stopped calling their parents by baby names. Mother and Dad, or
Mom and Pop, were what other people said. For Janie, her parents were still Mommy and Daddy.
And what had happened to Mommy and Daddy?
Her mother stumbled through their lovely home as if the floor, like life, had come out from under her. Her handsome silverhaired father, who coached school sports during slow seasons in his accounting practice, had become silent and stunned.
It was Janie's fault. She had had choices. She could have said nothing. She could have done nothing. Could have let it go. Let it stay a mystery. She could have chosen to forget the hundred strange things that did not add up.
Janie's head rang with "if only's." If only she had not taken SarahCharlotte's milk carton at lunch. She had been given a milk allergy for an liiiportant reason: so she would never lay eyes on the photograph of the missing child featured on the milk carton. But one fine autumn day, in the school cafeteria, Janie snitched SarahCharlotte's milk.
If only she had tossed that milk carton into the garbage.
If only she had not researched newspaper clippings!
If only she had not told Reeve.