What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [41]
Now she laid strips of bacon in the frying pan, cracked eggs into a yellow bowl. She beat them vigorously, then came to the table with the coffeepot to refill Jasmine’s cup.
“Thanks, Marion,” Jasmine said, and there was something in the rich tone of her voice that had me look quickly at her, then away. An image came to me: a hand pushing into folds of black velvet, a hidden discovery.
I pulled my chair closer to the table, straightened my fork and knife, put my glass of orange juice directly over the knife, where it belonged. Then I put my hands in my lap to wait. Polite. Proper. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“At work, silly,” my mother said. “You know that.”
So I did. He was at work, missing the party. Not even knowing if he liked where he was or not.
At five o’clock that evening, Sharla and I were seated at the kitchen table, shucking corn for dinner. I hated this job because I had once found a worm when I was doing it, and I was sure it would happen again. But my mother was frying chicken and the aroma made up for my discomfort. She used many spices for frying chicken, among them tarragon, ginger, and rosemary. But she always added things quickly, and so it was hard to see everything that she used. Once I asked her, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said, “Oh, it’s a secret. I couldn’t tell you all the ingredients. It wouldn’t turn out anymore if I did.” She seemed to be both joking and not; I did not pursue it. Sharla said our mother wouldn’t tell what went into many of her recipes because she didn’t know; she just made things up. I didn’t see why she couldn’t admit that, if it were true.
After I cleaned the last ear of corn, I laid some of the whitish silk across the top of my head. “I am a sun-streaked blonde,” I said. “I am on the cover of Life.” No response, not from Sharla or my mother. I moved the silk to rest under my nose. “I am a man,” I said narrowly, through my pooched lips. They both looked at me, then away.
I pulled the corn silk off my face. “I am a man in a circus,” I said loudly. “I train animals that would just as soon kill you both as look at you.”
“Uh-huh,” my mother said, turning the chicken pieces carefully.
“They would kill you if they would kill us,” Sharla said.
“No,” I said, “they would not. Because I would know how to charm them, and they would love me.”
“Huh, they would eat you first, because you’re so annoying,” Sharla said.
She was mad at me. As far as I could figure, it was because Wayne had liked me better than her. Sharla had tried to show off at the record store, pretending to know more than she did. But Wayne noticed that she confused Fabian with Pat Boone, and she shut up after that, sulked all the way home.
When we had all gone into the woods, Sharla had hung around listlessly for a while, then gone inside the house. At first, I felt guilty, imagining her lying on her bed, bored, holding her arm up in the air to watch the charms on her bracelet dangle. But then I forgot about her. The truth was, meeting Wayne had let me see that I was tired of Sharla’s company. I recognized in Wayne a kindred spirit. His gaze lingered on the things I found interesting, too: a bent-over woman wearing a print kerchief on her head and crossing the street with achy slowness; a shop window with merchandise arranged into the shape of a pyramid; a truck with a canvas flap blowing open as it took a corner. Wayne liked to read. He picked up a shiny penny he passed on the sidewalk, pronouncing it lucky, then gave it to me.
In some ways, I could hardly stand being with him; it was too new and too much. But I also wanted to be nowhere else. I felt thirsty and thirsty; I felt hungry and hungry. I wanted to show him everything in my box hidden in the closet; I wanted to have a picnic with him; I hoped he’d try to kiss me on the mouth. I was ready, suddenly, to be kissed. My stomach ached mildly, then occasionally leaped up as though it