What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [29]
Sharla came to the table when I had just finished eating. “What did you have?” she asked.
“French toast. It was good. There’s more; it’s on the plate by the stove.”
“I don’t want French toast. I hate French toast.”
“You do not.”
“Do so.”
“No you do not. You ate it last week!”
“So? You can change what you like.”
My mother entered the kitchen. “If you girls want to fight,” she said, “go outside.” There was a thinness in her voice that I had never heard before, a tautness.
“It’s raining,” Sharla said.
“I could not care less.”
Sharla and I looked at each other, silently agreeing to abandon our fighting for the sake of this much more interesting turn of events.
“We would catch pneumonia,” Sharla said.
My mother wet the dishrag, began wiping off the counter. “I suppose you could.”
“We could die,” I said playfully.
She looked up at me, shrugged. “There are worse things.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. The blank passivity in her face reminded me of watching Sharla sleep. Then she looked down at the counter, wiped and wiped in circles, at nothing.
“Mom?” She was scaring me; I wanted to grab the dishrag away from her and throw it on the floor. I wanted to kick her.
She stopped wiping, looked wearily up at me. “Oh, Ginny, what?” There. She was back. Somewhat. At least she was looking at me. “What do you want?”
“Well, I want pancakes,” Sharla said.
“You don’t want French toast?” my mother asked.
“I hate French toast.”
“Fine.” She dumped the leftover French toast in the garbage, cracked an egg against the side of a bowl for pancakes. In my mind, the sound rivaled the thunder. No one spoke. We watched our mother make pancakes, but cautiously, the way the hunter parts the grass to observe the wild beast.
“What’s wrong with her?” Sharla asked, after our mother had set pancakes in front of her and once again left the room.
I shrugged.
She took a big swallow of orange juice, then said, “I know what’s wrong.”
“So why did you ask me?”
“I wanted to see if you knew, too.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Maybe you don’t.” Sharla cut her pancakes into neat squares. She always cut her food this way, and it annoyed and fascinated me both. I rested my chin on my folded arms, watching her.
“Stop,” Sharla said.
“What?”
“Stop watching me.”
“I’m not watching you, I’m watching your fork.”
“Well, stop.”
She loaded up a fork with pancake squares, shoved them into her mouth, then spoke around them. “She misses Jasmine,” she said.
“Who does?”
“Mom!”
“Where’s Jasmine?”
“She’s out of town. She went to Mobile, Alabama.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. I just know she went. Because I wanted to go visit her yesterday and Mom said, ‘She just left,’ and it was all sad-like.”
“How long’s she gone for?”
“A week. Six more days.”
I considered this. Then, “Want to snoop over there?” I asked. We had a key to Jasmine’s house. She and my mother had exchanged keys only a few days after Jasmine moved in.
Sharla did not answer. I took this as a good sign.
“Tonight, midnight?” I asked, and again she did not answer.
Well, then. Plans cast in stone.
* * *
When I went upstairs to dress, I saw my parents’ bedroom door open. The bedside lamp was on; the sky had darkened considerably. I saw the rain pounding sideways at the window, as if seeking furious entry. My mother was lying on her unmade bed. She was on her back, one arm resting across her closed eyes. Her ankles were crossed neatly, shoes lined up at the side of the bed.
“Mom?” I whispered.
“Yes?” She did not take her arm away or open her eyes.
“Are you sick?”
Now she did open her eyes. Then she sat up and stared at me for some time before she answered.
“Yes,” she finally said, softly. And then, louder, “Yes. I have … a headache.”
“Want us to do anything?”
“Don’t fight.”
“Okay.” I closed her door, then went back into Sharla’s and my bedroom. I made both our beds, put our dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, wadded up a bunch of toilet tissue to dust the furniture and along the window ledge. I was sorry for everything, because I didn’t know what specifically