What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [36]
Later that night, we played Monopoly and I won, because everybody underestimates the value of Baltic and Mediterranean. It was no fun beating my parents, because they wanted me to win. But wiping out Sharla’s funds, that was satisfying. Sometimes when she lost she would cry. Not tonight though. Tonight she forced a yawn and said she was tired of playing, anyway; thank God the game was over.
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” my mother said.
“I’m not.”
My mother sighed.
“I’m not! If I had said, ‘God, I’m happy the game is over,’ that would have been taking His name in vain. But I was just thanking Him.”
My mother stared at her. Then, “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Fine. So long as you know the difference.”
After we went to bed, Sharla and I didn’t talk about what I’d found in my father’s drawer. Neither of us spoke at all. I thought perhaps each of us was waiting for the other to bring it up. Instead, we both fell asleep. In the early morning light, I lay awake, wondering if I’d only dreamed it. When finally I heard the rustling sounds of Sharla waking up, I asked, “Did you see what I found in Dad’s drawer last night?”
“So what? Everybody has them who does sex.”
“You knew they were there? You’ve seen them before?”
“No. But everybody has them.”
I wasn’t so sure. But I let it go in the way that you decide you don’t really want something you can’t reach.
I look at my watch. Halfway to San Francisco. I wonder how Sharla will look. Last time we met, I hadn’t seen her in six months, and I was surprised by a new short-short hairdo she had. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t told me about it. “Didn’t I,” she said. “I was sure I had. Wait—I did! You said you were thinking of doing it yourself!”
“I did not!” I said. “I would never do that!” And then, quickly, “Not that it doesn’t look good on you.” It did look good on her, from certain angles. But on the whole, I thought it made her look older. Of course, we are older. This is something that is always sneaking up and shocking me. Sharla said recently that she could tell how much older she was getting not by how many wrinkles she had, but how many regrets.
“That’s a pretty grim way of thinking,” I said, when she told me.
“It’s true, though, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t really have that many regrets. I really like my life. I like the choices I’ve made.”
“Oh come on,” she said. “Don’t you regret not going to Woodstock now more than ever?”
“Well, yeah, that’s true. Yeah. I should have gone to Tahiti for the winter with Dennis Erickson that one time, too. I really should have. He bought me a ticket and everything.”
“We should have done a lot more dangerous things.”
“I suppose.”
“And we also should have … I don’t know. I guess as I get older I feel more … generous in my heart. You know?”
I said nothing.
“Ginny?” she said gently, and I knew exactly where she was headed.
“I think some things are too hard to forgive,” I said. “And I think some things don’t deserve to be forgiven.” I felt as though I were saying something I’d said so many times that the words had lost their meaning entirely. And yet I also felt I meant them.
I wonder now—chilly thought—if some of Sharla’s longing to forgive, to come to terms, has to do with the fact that she knew even then that she was going to get seriously ill.
I look at my watch again.
My mother said she found the measure of time interesting. Another lie. I’m sure she found it terrifying.
The next Correspondence Day, there was no watching Walt Disney World until our letters were complete. I sat at the dining-room table jiggling my heel, chewing at the side of my thumb, staring wide-eyed into space. I had absolutely nothing to tell my grandparents, even though this was my week to write to my father’s parents, who were easier to write to because they were less critical than my mother