What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [66]
“Anyway, that night, after I put my purse down, I … well, this is really true. I thought I heard the rings talking to me! I thought I heard them whisper. I thought I heard them cry. And so I put them back on.”
I smiled, uneasily. She used to try to make up bedtime stories to tell us, sometimes, when we were all done with the library books we’d checked out that week. She would make up stories that were not very good, as this one was not.
But now she was staring at the wall, warming to her own revelations. “I took the rings off because at the grocery store they’d been out of green peppers and I’d started crying. And I knew it wasn’t green peppers I was crying about, it was my marriage.” She looked at us, shrugged.
“We can’t hear this,” Sharla said, standing suddenly. “What do you think we are, your friends?”
“Can you be?” she asked.
I looked at Sharla for the answer, found it in the line of her clenched jaw.
“You’re our mom,” I said quietly.
“I’m your mother, but I’m also a person. I’m a person!”
“I’m calling Dad,” Sharla said, and started to leave the room.
My mother grabbed her arm. “Don’t,” she said. “Let me finish. Then I’ll leave. I’m not staying.”
I felt as though one step away from me the earth had opened up wide.
“What do you mean?” I managed. “You just got back. You were gone so long. You just got back!”
“Listen to me,” she said. “Both of you. You might not understand everything I’m saying to you now. But you’ve got to hear it. I can’t stay here. I can’t be married to your father. In this time away, I have begun to see so much. And I can’t be your mother in the old way anymore. I want to be better than that!”
“But you’re a good mother,” I said quickly, and Sharla just as quickly said, “No, she’s not.”
“Well you’re absolutely right, Sharla,” my mother said. “I wasn’t a good mother. But I intend to be one from now on.”
Sharla snorted.
“Just listen to me,” she said. “Let me finish. At the river that night, I got out of the car and I lay down on the ground.”
I saw her doing it: she would have smoothed her skirt beneath her, kept her knees and ankles pressed together.
“The trees looked like negatives, I remember that, the leaves weren’t out fully, and it was cold, but I didn’t feel cold. The moon was full and so beautiful and I remember thinking I wanted it in me, to shine out of me, you know? To shine out from between my teeth and out of my ears and … oh, I just wanted everything to finally come!”
“I’m calling Dad,” Sharla said again, and left the room. And then she stuck her head back in to say, “Don’t stay here with her, Ginny. She’s crazy. Come with me. Come on. I’m calling Dad.”
I sat still, and Sharla left, clattered down the stairs.
My mother looked over at me. “Do you understand, honey? I felt full of magic for a moment. I felt that anything could happen. Things could really change! And then that feeling all drained out of me. And I got back in the car and I came home. And I put the groceries away. And your father came into the kitchen to ask if I’d gotten baloney and of course I’d gotten baloney because I always got baloney, I brought home the exact same kind and the exact same amount every week. I wanted to take his face between my hands and say … and say ‘Please, can we just stop living this lifeless life, can we just let each other out of this prison we’ve created! I just wanted to—”
I snuffled loudly, involuntarily. I had started to cry and the tears flowed unimpeded down my face, onto my sweater.
“Oh, Ginny,” my mother said softly, and she knelt before me, took my hands into hers. “If I stay