The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [30]
Slowly, Kathryn began once more to pull at the sheet. Mattie suddenly opened her mouth and yanked the sheet out herself.
“This sucks,” she said when she could breathe.
Mattie was in the shower. Julia, who was wearing a short red-plaid bathrobe over a nightgown that predated the Carter administration, was at the stove. It was Julia’s belief that being tired of an article of clothing wasn’t a good enough reason to buy a new one. Another unwritten rule was that if you hadn’t worn a certain dress within a year, you should give it away.
She looked tired, and her skin was chalky. Kathryn was surprised to see — or perhaps only to notice for the first time — a thickening at the top of Julia’s spine that caused her head and shoulders to bend just slightly forward.
“Robert’s still at the inn?” Julia asked, her back a soft barrel of red plaid.
“No,” Kathryn said quickly, not wanting to think about Robert and what he had said or hadn’t said. “He stayed at the inn last night, but he’s at the house now.”
She put her mug of coffee on the wooden table, which had an oilcloth cover stretched tight against it, folded and fastened underneath with thumbtacks. Over the years, the colors of the oilcloths had changed — from red to blue to green — but not the clean, tight surface, the feel of the wavy threads beneath her fingers.
Julia set a plate of scrambled eggs and toast before Kathryn. “I can’t,” Kathryn said.
“Eat them. You need it.”
“My stomach . . .”
“You’re no good to Mattie, Kathryn, if you don’t keep your strength up. You’re suffering, I can see that, but you’re a parent to that girl, and that’s your job, whether you like it or not.”
There was a long silence.
“Excuse me?” Kathryn said.
Julia sat down. “I’m sorry,” she said. “My nerves are shot.” “There’s something you need to know,” Kathryn said quickly. Julia looked at Kathryn.
“There’s a rumor. It’s wild. It’s awful.”
“What?”
“Do you know what a CVR is?”
Julia’s head swiveled abruptly toward the doorway. Mattie was standing at the threshold, as if not sure what to do next, as if she had forgotten how to be. Her hair had soaked the shoulders of a blue sweatshirt that was cropped just short of her waistline. With it, she had on jeans (size two, slim) that she wore low over her Adidas, the hem frayed just so. Her feet naturally turned inward, which gave her, from the waist down, a childlike stance that contrasted startlingly at times with her cool upper-body posture. She put the tips of her fingers into the top slits of her front pockets and drew her shoulders up. Her eyes were reddened from crying. She tossed her head so that all of her hair fell momentarily to one side. Her upper lip trembled. Nervously, she reached up and folded her hair into a quick knot, and then let it go again.
“Hey, what’s up?” Mattie asked bravely, looking at the floor. Kathryn had to turn away. She didn’t want Mattie to see the tears that had sprung to her eyes.
“Mattie,” she said when she could speak. “Come sit here by me and have some eggs and toast. You hardly ate anything yesterday.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Mattie pulled out a chair — the chair, as it happened, farthest from her mother’s — and sat gingerly at its edge, her shoulders slightly hunched, her hands folded in her lap, her feet making a V pattern on the floor.
“Please, Mattie,” she said.
“Mom, I’m not hungry, OK? Back off.”
Julia looked about to speak to Mattie, but Kathryn caught her eye and shook her head.
“Whatever,” Kathryn said in as offhand a voice as she could muster.
“Well, maybe toast,” Mattie conceded.
Julia fixed Mattie a plate of toast and a cup of tea. Mattie tore minute pieces of the toast crust off — pieces only as big as white-bread communion offerings — and chewed each slowly and unenthusiastically until she had made the