Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [39]
Cleo sits in the parking lot of the shopping center for a long time and then she goes home and makes the hamburger recipe.
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“You all go on about your cats like they was babies,” says Linda. Linda is sanding a rocking chair, which is upside down on newspapers in the hall.
“They’re a heap sight less trouble,” says Cleo, who is dusting. Rita Jean has called to say Dexter is home from the hospital, but there isn’t much hope.
“Stop fanning doors, Tammy,” Linda says. “Grandma’s got a present for you.”
Cleo brings out the picture album and the sweater.
“Now I want you to keep all them pictures in this,” she tells Tammy. “Here, squirt,” she says to Davey. “Here’s something else for me to pick up.”
The children take the presents wordlessly, examining them. Tammy turns the pages and pokes her fingers into the picture pockets. Davey rips the plastic wrapper off the sweater and holds it up. “It fits!” he says.
Davey turns on the television and Tammy sits on the divan, turning the empty pages of the picture album.
“You didn’t have to do that,” says Linda to Cleo.
“I’m just keeping up with the times,” Cleo says. “Spend, spend, spend.”
“Nothing wrong with keeping up with the times,” says Linda.
“I see you are. With all that old-timey stuff you’re collecting. Explain that.”
“Everybody’s going back to old-timey stuff. Furniture like yours is out of style.”
“Then maybe one day it’ll be antique. If I live that long.” Cleo pokes the dusting broom at the ceiling.
“We’re getting on your nerves,” says Linda. “We’re going to be getting out before long.”
“I hope you mean going back home where you belong. Not that I mean to kick you out. You know what I mean.”
“We’re going back home, all right,” Linda says. “This is the big night—I’m going to meet Bob at Kenlake. I’m going to have it out with him. I can’t wait.” She wipes the rocker with a rag and turns it right side up. “There, I think that’s enough. What a job. If I could just find a twin to it. Tammy, turn that radio down; you’re bothering Grandma.”
Cleo has to sit down. She is out of breath. The broom falls to the floor as she sinks onto the divan. “I’m not sixteen anymore,” she says. “I give out too quick.”
“Mama, there’s not a thing wrong with you. You just don’t do anything with yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at you; you’re still a young woman. You could go to school, make a nurse or something. That Mrs. Smith over yonder is sixty-eight and flies an airplane. By herself too.”
“I can see me doing that.” Cleo clutches a needlepoint pillow. Tammy and Davey are arguing, sounding like wild Indians, but the racket is losing its definition around her. She finds it hard to pick out individual sounds. It is just a racket, something like a prolonged, steady snore—with lots of tuneful snorts and snuffles and puffs. Jake used to snore like that, but she could always tug the covers or kick at him gently and he would stop.
“Rita Jean said I was in the prime of life,” says Cleo.
“Rita Jean should talk. Look at her. She petted that cat to death, if you ask me. And I never heard anything so ridiculous as her not wanting to go out West when she had the chance! I’d be gone in a minute!”
“People can’t just have everything they want, all the time,” Cleo says.
“I’m not mad at you, Mama. But people don’t have to do what they don’t want to as much now as they used to.”
“I should know that,” Cleo says. “It’s all over television. You make me feel awful.”
“I don’t mean to. It’s for your own good.”
Prissy-Tail jumps up on the divan and Cleo grabs her. She squirms up onto Cleo’s shoulder.
“You sure are lucky, Prissy-Tail, that you don’t have to worry,” Cleo says.
Linda pulls the rocker through the doorway into the living room. It scrapes the paint on the door facing.
—
Cleo is behind on supper. She is making a blackberry cobbler and she is confused about the timing. The children’s favorite show comes on before supper is ready. They take their plates into the living room. Mork and Mindy is the one thing Tammy and Davey