What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [28]
I was astounded at how my mother was able to move furniture alone—sometimes I’d find the heavy sofa on the other side of the room, the china cabinet in the dining room reoriented in order to maximize the afternoon light falling onto the cut-crystal glasses.
“Who helped you?” I would ask every time; and every time she would shrug and say, “No one.” I often imagined her in a phone booth, changing into some Superwoman costume in order to achieve such things, but she wore only a cleaning kerchief and dungarees (neatly belted, of course, with a nicely ironed blouse tucked into them). I would try out the new arrangement: lie on the sofa, read in a chair, turn on the television in its new place. I liked feeling as though I’d moved without having had to go anywhere; it gave me a safe thrill. Sharla and my father complained that it made them feel mixed up, that there was no reason to do such things; there was never anything wrong with the way things were.
My mother compromised by never changing around anything upstairs—the placement of things in her and my father’s bedroom, especially, was sacrosanct. I once used my mother’s hairbrush when I was in her room talking to her as she folded laundry on the bed. When I put the brush down on the left side of her dresser, she actually stopped what she was doing to come over and move it to the right. It was not cruel in any way, or even particularly admonitory; it was just that up here, things stayed. There was a pleasurable aspect to that, I supposed, but it confused me, too. Why, in that room only, did there have to be such a sense of change as sin?
On the rainy morning I found my mother staring at her magazine pictures, I thought it might be another redecorating day. Hard to say for sure, though; the cleaning kerchief was nowhere in sight—my mother was still in her robe. This surprised me; it was almost eleven.
I sat at the table across from her. “What are you doing?”
She looked up. “What?”
I pointed to the pictures. “What are you doing?”
“Oh,” she said, closing the folder, “nothing, really. Looking. Dreaming.”
“Dreaming of what?”
“Oh, of how I’d really like things.” She smiled, raised her eyebrows. “You know, I wish—”
“Can I have some French toast?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to interrupt, but I was hungry; and I was afraid if she started telling me what she’d really like, breakfast would be delayed for a good long while.
Her smile changed, and she rose to open the refrigerator. When she was beating the milk into the eggs, I said, “So … what do you wish?”
“Never mind.” Her voice was quiet, flat. She didn’t look up. She served me perfectly browned French toast, kissed the top of my head, then went upstairs to dress. I ate alone, stared out the window at the rain. I saw that Sharla’s and my latest tepee, made out of branches tied together with twine, had collapsed. There’d be no repairing anything today, though. Today would be an indoor day: Parcheesi. Monopoly, the money limp and folding over in our hands from the humidity. Store, with Sharla hogging the role of cashier. Crazy 8s, Go Fish, War. Dishes would pile up in the sink from our frequent snacks, eating being the favorite recreation of the trapped. Already I was thinking of S’mores, of how I might convince my mother that they were fine to have before lunch. Or for