What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [52]
“Ginny?” She walked over and put her hand to my forehead. “Uh-oh. Let’s go.” She started to leave, then looked behind her at me, standing there. “Come on!”
I followed a few steps, then stopped.
Sharla came up beside me, grabbed my arm. “Hurry up!” she hissed. “Do you want everyone to know you’re sick?”
Another difficult question. I shrugged, then sat on the floor.
“Will you stop that?” Sharla bent down to pull at me. The package with the nightgown slipped out from under her arm, and I reached for it, uselessly. It was too far away.
The saleswoman who had helped us, a thin, older woman wearing a navy dress with white polka dots, glasses perched at the end of her nose, came over to us. “What happened here?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“No,” I said, vaguely, watching the polka dots swim; but Sharla quickly followed with, “Yes. She’s fine. She just fell down a little. We’re going.” She yanked on my arm again, and I lay down on the floor.
“What’s your phone number, girls?” the saleswoman asked.
I closed my eyes. The cool linoleum felt so good against the side of my face. I pulled my knees up to my chest, pushed my fists between my knees. If they would just leave me alone. If they would just pull the shades and tiptoe out now.
From far away, I heard Sharla say the digits to our phone number. “Home,” I thought, and the word suggested such richness I thought I could smell it, sweet and buttery.
“It’s like syrup,” I told Sharla, who was now kneeling at my side, looking around. She was embarrassed; a pretty shade of rose flushed her face.
“What’s like syrup?”
“Home.” I felt wise and benevolent, forgiven and all-forgiving, and very, very light. I smiled.
A moment, and then Sharla said, “Oh boy, you are really going to get us in trouble. It’s Mom’s birthday!”
I thought this over for a moment, and then closed my eyes again. I couldn’t care. It wasn’t that I didn’t care; it was that I couldn’t.
I felt the weight of something on my mattress and opened my eyes to see my mother sitting there. “Are you better?” she asked. “Do you feel any better?” She was wearing rouge and mascara and red lipstick, a nice blue dress. At first I thought she did it to make me feel better, but then I remembered the Tupperware party.
I blinked, yawned. “I think so.”
“You slept well.” She put her lips to my forehead. “Your fever is down. It’s about a hundred now.” My mother had an uncanny ability to estimate fever using her lips alone. She had never yet been off by more than two-tenths of a degree.
She crossed her legs, sighed. “You want some Jell-O?”
“No.”
“Ginger ale?”
“No.”
She looked at me for a long moment, frightened, I knew; it frightened her when we didn’t eat. And so, “What kind of Jell-O?” I asked.
She smiled, relieved. “Cherry, you know how you like that. Would you like me to just bring some up here and leave it?”
I nodded. It would make her feel much better to do that. I could always flush it down the toilet.
The doorbell chimed, and my mother looked at her watch. “Oh, they’re here,” she said, her voice a mix of pleasure and disappointment. And then, “I’ll come up here and check on you, Ginny, but I couldn’t cancel the party—it was too late. Sharla will stay with you, she’ll be right up.” She went out into the hall, called her.
“I’m getting the door,” Sharla called back, and then I heard her welcoming Mrs. Spurlock in her best company voice.
My mother kissed my forehead. “You just let Sharla know if you need anything.”
“Mom?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Happy birthday.”
“Oh, never mind about that.”
“We got you something.”
“Yes, I know. Thank you.”
“You’ll open it tonight, right?”
She looked again at her watch, smoothed her skirt. “Of course I will. I can’t wait.” She went out into the hall, called once more for Sharla, who yelled that she was coming, though she had not been.
When Sharla finally came into the room, she put a dish of Jell-O on the bedside table, making a point of not looking at me. She walked over to the window, stood silently for a while, staring out. Then she flopped