Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler [111]
He drummed his fingers and looked out the window.
“In the summer, she sleeps forever. My husband says, ‘Jeepers, Mag.’ He says, ‘Why do you let her sleep so late?’ Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because she’s impossible. Truly impossible. I mean, it isn’t believable that she could be so awful. She comes downstairs in her bathrobe, yawning. Finds me in the kitchen. Says, ‘Well, Ma, I see you’re wearing your insecticide perfume again. DDT Number Five.’ Then she floats away. Leaving me sniffing my wrists and wondering. I say, ‘Liddie, are you going to clean your room today?’ and she says, ‘Listen to you, sniping and griping; you sound exactly like your mother.’ I make a little joke; she says, ‘Very funny, Ma. Ha ha. The big comedian.’ I find she’s stolen my best lace bra that I only wear on my anniversary and she flings it back all grimy at the seams: ‘Take it, who wants it, it’s too flat-chested anyhow.’ To my face, she calls me a bitch, says I’m fat and homely, says she hates me, and I say, ‘Listen here, young lady, it’s time we got a few things straight,’ but all she does is yawn and start chewing one of those plastic price-tag strings off the sleeve of her blouse. I tell my husband, ‘Speak to her,’ so he says, ‘Liddie, you know how your mother gets. Why do you upset her?’ I say, ‘How I get? What do you mean, how I get?’ and before you know, it’s him and me fighting, which may have been her plan all along. Division. Disruption. Chaos. That’s what she enjoys. She’s got this boyfriend, treats him terribly. Finally he broke up with her, and she cried all night and asked a hundred times, ‘Why did I act like I did? What can I do to change his mind?’ I told her to be honest, just phone him and say she didn’t know what had got into her; so next morning she phoned, and they made up, and everything was wonderful and she came and thanked me for my good advice. Her life was back in order, it looked like. So she sat at the table a while, calm as I’ve seen her. Then she started swinging her foot. Then she started picking her fingernails. Then she went and phoned her boyfriend again. Said, ‘Roger, I didn’t want to tell you this but I thought it’s time you knew. The doctor says I’m dying of leukemia.’ ”
Luke laughed. She looked over at him innocently, but he noticed a wry, proud twist at the corners of her mouth. “Around two or three o’clock,” she said, “I get in my car and start driving. At first, I’m talking out loud. You ought to see me. ‘I’m never coming back,’ I say. I’m cursing through my teeth; I’m honking at crippled old ladies. ‘That little wretch, that pest, that spoiled brat,’ I say. ‘She’ll be sorry!’ I speed along—oh, you ought to see my traffic record! One more point on my license and I’ll have to take that Saturday course on the evils of reckless driving; have to watch that movie where the lady ends up decapitated. Well, at least it’ll get me out of the house. I sling the car around and don’t let other cars ahead of me and I picture how my husband will come home and say, ‘Liddie? Where is your mother? What did you do to her, Liddie?’ and Liddie will feel just awful … but then I think of my husband. I have a really nice husband. It’s not him I want to leave. And I wonder if I could sneak back home at night and tell him, ‘Psst! Let’s both leave. Let’s elope,’ I’ll say. But I know he wouldn’t do it. He’s not as much involved. She annoys him but he’s not around enough to make any serious mistakes with her. That’s what kills me: making mistakes. Overreacting, letting her get to me … oh, I can think of so many! You could say that what I’m leaving behind is my own poor view of me, right? So then I start driving slower. I start remembering things. I think of Liddie when she was small: she always stood so straight. You could pick her out of a crowd by her straight little back. And