What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [46]
“A shoe!” Sharla had said, incredulous. “You won a prize from drawing a shoe?” But I was not surprised. All you had to do was really look at a shoe to see how much was there: the valleys in the creases of the leather, the graceful lines of the hanging laces, the implied history of the absent wearer.
My mother stood smiling, her hands clasped tightly together. I noticed dark circles under her eyes, and I checked her face for anything else, but there was nothing. She was not ill. She did not even appear to be tired, really.
Jasmine rose, put on her shoes, which I saw now had been left in a corner of the room. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Marion,” she said. “We’ll plan the menu.” She smiled at me as she walked past. I noticed the faint aroma of a new perfume.
Wayne waved at us, followed her out. “I’ll see you later,” his back told me. I’d shown him my ticket on the way home. He hadn’t understood what the numbers meant at first; they didn’t do that in Mobile. But he knew now.
“What menu is Jasmine talking about?” I asked my mother. I had to get my mind off Wayne for a minute, or I’d faint.
“Oh, for my Tupperware party,” she said. “It’s that time of year.”
“What night will it be?” I liked Tupperware parties. My mother made fancy snacks we never got otherwise: cucumber sandwiches. Asparagus rolled in wafer-thin slices of ham. Small flowered dishes full of fat cashews.
“August seventeenth,” she said, and began straightening the pillows on the sofa.
“That’s your birthday!” Sharla said.
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t you want … I don’t know, it’s your birthday!” Sharla was clearly frustrated by my mother’s lack of attention to herself; I appreciated it, since it kept my birthday as the important one.
“I know that, Sharla. I’m aware of when my birthday is.”
“Well, aren’t you and Dad going out for dinner or something?”
“I don’t know. The day before, I suppose we could. Or the day after, what difference does it make, really?”
Sharla and I stood still, stared at her. “We’ll go,” she said, laughing. “Just not on the day itself. It doesn’t matter.”
Does so was at the back of my throat. Stuck there.
“I’m going to bed. Did you girls lock the door behind you?”
We hadn’t. We didn’t do that. Our father did that every night; then his large frame filled our doorway as he checked on us. Often, I’d been awake to see him. He kept one hand in his pants pocket, and he leaned against the doorjamb, just watching. I could hear him breathe, sometimes. And sometimes I could hear him sigh. I always wanted to talk to him then, to offer him some sort of reassurance that he seemed to need, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for being awake. I missed him now, as though he’d been away for a very long time.
Then, as if in answer to a silent request, I saw headlights sweep across the ceiling, heard a car door slam. “Dad’s home!” I said.
“Is he?” My mother was halfway up the stairs. She did not start back down.
I looked at Sharla, then at the empty staircase, then at my father coming through the front door. He looked tired: his tie was off, his rumpled shirt open a few buttons. But he looked good. He did, he looked good. “Mom just went up,” I said. “Just now.”
He glanced toward the stairs. “Okay,” he said. And then, “What are you two doing up so late?”
“We saw a movie,” Sharla said. “Ben Hur.”
“Ah. Yes, I want to see that one, too.” He put his briefcase in the closet, arched his back, rubbed a shoulder.
“Are you tired?” I asked.
“Me? No. No, I’m fine.”
He said that when he was sick, too. He would be in his plaid robe, face flushed with fever, flat on his back, and that is exactly what he would say.
I felt in my pocket for my ticket stub, forced a yawn. “I’m going upstairs,” I said. My father crossed over to me, kissed the top of my head. “Sleep well.”
Not hardly. I had so much to do it felt like an alarm clock had just gone off. I went into the bathroom. I wanted to comb my hair and put some Vaseline on my lips. It could look like lipstick,