The Beautiful Between - Alyssa B. Sheinmel [50]
“With Jeremy? What kind of sick is he?” Oh. My shoulders slump with relief; I’d already forgotten about that lie.
I shrug. “Some kind of flu that’s been going around.”
“Oh, I’ve heard about that.”
I stifle a mean laugh. Since I made up that a flu was going around, I’m either benefiting from the coincidence that there is an actual flu going around, or from my mother’s desire to act like she’s in the know.
“I hope that he’s staying away from Kate,” she says. “I mean, with all that chemo, her immune system must be compromised.”
“Yeah.” I hadn’t thought about that. “I’m sure he is.” By this time, my mother has heard the details of Kate’s illness through the grapevine. I get a little guilty satisfaction from knowing that I know so much more than she does, and that I know because the Coles have told me themselves. After all, she’s kept so much from me.
“Of course. He’d never jeopardize her health.”
“Of course.”
She pauses at my door. I wonder what more she wants. But then she turns and I hear her padding down the hall, and then ordering the pizza. When it comes, I do drag myself out of my room and sit at the table, but I bring my physics book with me. I just kind of stare at it while I eat.
“You can have the last slice, honey.”
“That’s okay, I’m full.”
“Me too,” my mother says, and laughs. I don’t really understand why both of us being full is funny, but I smile back. And I definitely don’t know why I choose to ruin this moment by asking, “Do I look like my father?”
“What?” she says, anxiety making her voice high-pitched, turning the end of her laughter into cackles.
“Well, it’s just, I look nothing like you—I figure I must take after him.”
She doesn’t say anything, and I keep going. Maybe I’m testing her strength, or maybe I’m testing mine. Certainly I’m justifying her fear of being alone with me.
I lean back in my chair, cross my legs under me. “I’m taller than you, and I have straight hair, and my eyes are gray and yours are green. Plus, my mouth is much wider than yours.” I list all this as though she needs to be told. As though it’s not evident to anyone who sees us just walking down the street. Strangers would assume I take after my father.
“You’ve seen pictures of him,” she says slowly, maybe angrily. “Judge for yourself.”
“I guess I meant, do you think I look like him? Do I remind you of him?”
She doesn’t say anything and begins to gather our plates, forks, and knives. I follow her into the kitchen. “Can’t you at least tell me that?” I say.
“No,” she says, and I think she’s refusing me, but then she goes on. “You don’t remind me of him. You didn’t ever—you never got to spend time with him, and so you never picked up his mannerisms, the way he gestured when he talked, the odd expressions he used—things like that.”
She continues, “Maybe you picked up some of his habits from me—I mean, I’m sure I picked things like that up from him, living with him for all those years. But by the time … by the end, I couldn’t remember which ones had started out as his and which as mine.”
She stops loading the dishwasher long enough to remember one thing. “He used the word ‘ma’am’ a lot, I think as a joke. He’d say ‘Yes, ma’am’ to me when I was giving him a hard time. I started saying ‘ma’am’ too, to my mother, to friends; I just randomly picked up the word. I don’t remember when I stopped using it.”
The dishes are all in the dishwasher, and she wipes her hands on the dish towel by the sink.
“Anyway”—she looks at the table, at my physics book—“good luck with your studying.” I take the cue and head back to my room. It’s the most I can remember her ever telling me about my father.
I think: I’ll tell Jeremy when he comes over for his bedtime cigarette. And then I remember that he isn’t coming. And then all I can think about is Jeremy. I want to know how Kate is, and I want to know how Jeremy’s test went today. I take forever to fall asleep that night. I pile three blankets on top of me, thinking that their