What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [59]
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“Shhh!” She patted the floor next to her, and I sat down.
“Even if it weren’t true, there’s other things,” my mother said. “There’s so much more. You have no idea, Steven. You have no idea! You live your neat life in the way that you want to, you decide everything, you never stop to think about me! As a person, I mean! I’m just … your wife. Like your shoes!”
“Marion, I have no idea what you’re talking about! When did this happen? What’s the matter with you? You’ve never been like this. Never!”
“I have been!” she yelled. “I have been and have been and have been!”
“Marion.” My father’s voice was quiet now.
“No!” she yelled.
A long silence. The grandfather clocked chimed the half hour, then the cuckoo. The wind moved the bushes next to the house and I heard their scratching sound. It used to scare me, that sound. Now it comforted me.
“What do you need?” my father asked, finally. “What should I do?”
Muffled sounds of sobbing.
“Marion. Are you … are you having a nervous breakdown?”
She stopped weeping. It seemed as loud as screeching brakes, this sudden quiet.
I heard a chair slide slowly across the floor. “Steven, I am thirty-six years old. I used to tell everyone that by the time I was thirty-five, I would … Well, whatever it was I was going to do, it would be done by then. I would have done it. But that time has come and gone, and I’ve done nothing. I am nothing.”
“Oh, Marion, don’t say that. How can you say that? You’re a wife and a mother.”
“That is NOTHING!” She yelled this so loud her voice broke, like a boy’s when it was changing over into a man’s.
I felt a curious combination of anger and pain, a small tornado of emotion twisting up from my stomach into my throat. I took in a breath, gritted my teeth, stood. I was going down there. I was going to present the fact of myself for her reconsideration.
“Don’t!” Sharla whispered, and grabbed my arm. She stared straight ahead, unblinking, immobile. Her face was empty of any emotion that I could read.
I jerked away, started downstairs, stopped halfway when I heard my mother say, “I never even wanted children! I just did it! You had to do it, you had to do it!”
I leaned against the wall, opened my mouth, closed it.
“But I wanted to … oh Steven, you just don’t know. I’m not like—”
“Marion, I want you to stop this right now. I want you to lower your voice. You’ll wake them up. For God’s sake!”
I started back upstairs, slowly, slowly. I had two knees, two feet. This is what I thought of. I had two hands, two eyes, two ears. There was a hammer and anvil in the middle ear, I had two of those.
“I don’t care if I wake them up,” my mother said, but her voice was low now, contrite.
My father sighed. “Do you … Would it help to go away? Maybe visit your parents, or … just get away?”
A long silence. And then, “Maybe it would.”
I saw that Sharla was no longer at the top of the stairs. I went into our bedroom, saw her shadowy C-shape lying in bed, turned away from the door. I got into her bed with her, turned on my side, rested my hand on top of her head. When I used to suck my thumb, I would often hold on to a piece of Sharla’s hair, twist it around my fingers. I did this now, lifted a few silky strands of her hair, wound them gently around my pointer. She didn’t say a word, just moved over to give me more room. I put my thumb in my mouth, then pulled it out and wiped it on my T-shirt. Then I moved closer to Sharla. We stayed like that.
If Sharla is really, really ill, I’m going to bring her home with me. No one will take care of her like I can. I know that. She knows that, too. No one is closer to her—not her husband, not her children, not our father.
Sometimes I wish so hard that my own daughters would be closer to each other. But it doesn’t seem to be happening. They will occasionally work side by side on some project, but they don’t look up and exchange