What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [65]
There was a moment of thick, awful silence, and then Sharla started kicking at the air. “Get out!” she yelled. “Just stay out! You’re gone! So go!”
I knew she wanted to cry; I could hear the tears in her voice fighting for release, but she would not give in, she would not.
My mother moved to Sharla’s bedside. Sharla raised a fist, then held it, trembling slightly, in the air between them. My mother wrapped her own hands around it. “I know you’re angry,” she said gently. “I don’t blame you.”
“I’M NOT ANGRY!”
Well.
My mother let go of Sharla’s fist, sat down beside her, then patted the bed on the other side of her. “Come over here, Ginny,” she said. And then, to Sharla, “Is it all right if Ginny sits here?” The question came too late; I was already there.
“Yeah, she can,” Sharla said. “She is my sister. You are no one.”
My mother sighed, looked away, then down at her feet. I saw that she was wearing tennis shoes and bobby socks. I thought, in some distant portion of my brain, that it looked cute—both bows tied so evenly. In a more distant part I was thinking, I have so much homework. And in the farthest recess, I held the image of my father, standing straight, smiling pleasantly, saying, “Marion? Marion?”
“I would like to tell you girls something,” my mother began.
“Sorry, no time to listen,” Sharla said, and my mother said sharply, “Stop it, now, Sharla. You stop this. I want to tell you something. It’s important.”
To my surprise, Sharla said nothing.
Our mother rose, crossed over to my bed, and sat down opposite us. Then she looked at us with such aching love I felt the need to shudder, though I did not.
“This is what happened,” she said. “I want you both to know everything. Why I went away. I think it will help you. Okay?”
Sharla said nothing. I nodded, swallowed. I wasn’t sure I needed to hear it. I needed only for her to change clothes and start dinner.
Our mother massaged one of her hands with the other, then rested them both in her lap. She cleared her throat, sat up straighter. “You know, I used to shop for groceries on Wednesday night,” she said.
At this odd beginning, I knew Sharla and I both wanted to look at each other. But we stayed focused on her.
“Well, one of those nights, early last spring, something happened. I was—”
Sharla belched long and loud with her mouth wide open, then reached for her milk and took a slurpy drink. I wanted to knock the glass out of her hand.
My mother looked at her, said nothing for a long time. I felt the air around us change, felt it grow heavy and specific. Finally, our mother said, “If you don’t want to hear this, Sharla, I can’t make you. I think it’s important for you to listen. For you and for me. But you don’t have to. If you would like, I will take Ginny downstairs and talk to her there.”
My stomach felt punched. “I—” I began. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I wanted only that my loyalty not be tested in either direction.
But then Sharla spoke. “So talk, then,” she told my mother. “Go ahead.”
My mother took a deep breath, resettled her shoulders. “All right. I went grocery shopping that night and when I was driving home, I passed that place by the river where you can pull over.”
“Kids park there,” Sharla said.
“Yes, they do,” my mother said, and I was shocked that she knew this. “But no one was there that night. And I just wanted to look at the water. I just wanted to be there. I turned off the engine and I sat there for a long time and then I … Well, I took my wedding rings off and threw them out the window.”
I stopped breathing. My foot, turned for a moment on its side, stayed there.
“I got out right away and found them,” she said. “But I didn’t put them on. I felt like I couldn’t put them back on.”
“Why not?” Sharla asked, and it irked me that she seemed to know more about this story than what was being told.
And so “Why not?” I asked, too.
She smiled, a sad thing. “I just couldn’t. And then I didn’t know what to do with them. So I put them in my wallet.