What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [72]
But Sharla pulled free, and was gone, running down the dim hall.
My mother turned to me, her eyes wide and bright. “I bought chicken,” she said, walking quickly back to the kitchen. “I thought I’d fry it. Mashed potatoes. And I made a cake, too, and guess what kind of frosting it has? Caramel! It’s in the refrigerator, take a look.” She put on an apron.
“I don’t want anything,” I said. “Thank you. I have to go with Sharla.”
“No you don’t,” my mother said, her back to me. She pulled down a small sack of flour from the cupboard, began shaking it into a bowl I had never seen before. “You can stay.”
“I don’t want to. I really don’t.” I backed up slowly until I got to the door; then I, too, began running.
My father received several more phone calls in the next week from a woman whose name we learned was Georgia Anderson. And then she came for dinner.
She was a secretary at my father’s office; she worked, in fact, for his boss. She was blond, blue-eyed, slightly overweight, but very pretty. She had a shy way about her, but she opened up when Sharla brought her to our bedroom. She told us she loved our room, examined with care (but without touching) our figurines, the pictures we had on our walls, the books on our nightstand, our stuffed animals. She told us she had shared a room with her sister when she was growing up, that she had loved and hated it, that they had used a piece of red yarn to divide the room exactly, that they spoke to each other at night on tin can telephones, that they got to have their own miniature Christmas tree on their dresser every year.
She had brought dessert: a cherry pie she had made that was still warm from the oven, the top decorated with beautiful pastry leaves. By the time we ate it, it seemed everyone felt relaxed and happy. I loved having our table balanced again, loved seeing my father converse with someone other than Sharla and me. When my father poured coffee for the two of them, Sharla and I excused ourselves to go and do homework.
“So what do you think of her?” Sharla asked. She was lying on her stomach, her head bent over her book, her hair hiding her face.
“I don’t know.” I liked her.
“I like her,” Sharla said.
“Me, too.”
Sharla turned onto her back, stretched out luxuriously. I shut my book, did the same.
“She made the dress she was wearing,” Sharla said.
“She did?” It was a beautiful green wool dress, full-skirted, with a soft bow at the neck. There was a matching green belt.
“Even the belt?”
“Yup. She sews everything: curtains, coats, tablecloths; she made Halloween costumes for all her nieces and nephews.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me, when you were in the bathroom.”
“I wish she’d make me something.” My wardrobe was in terrible shape; we never had gotten clothes for school, and I had in fact outgrown many things. I knew a girl at school whose mother sewed for her; she always wore matching headbands with her outfits.
“Ask her.” Sharla yawned. “She’ll do it.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she really loves to sew. And she really loves Dad.”
I looked quickly at Sharla, thinking of something to say that would undermine her remark, that would take away some of the strength and surety of it. But there was nothing to say. It was true.
Sharla stared back at me. She was not unhappy about this, I saw. Nor, I realized, was I. Somewhere inside, I’d been waiting for it. Now it was here. And it was not a bad thing. This weekend, we had decided, we were all going to look at Christmas displays in the store windows, then have dinner out at the fanciest restaurant we could think of.
I pushed my school books out of the way, reached for the Seventeen magazine Georgia had brought us as a happy-to-meet-you present. I began looking at the clothes. I wanted suggestions for all the things I could ask for now.
Georgia taught Sharla and me to sew. Sharla never kept it up after high school, but I did. I love it. There’s something about the self-reliance of it all, of understanding secrets