What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [75]
“Did she feel bad?” I asked. It came out too bright and eager; I hadn’t meant to sound that way.
“She … yes, it hurt her a lot that you wouldn’t come in. She’s trying, you know.”
“She’s trying too hard,” Sharla said. “It makes you feel weird.”
“She’s having kind of a bad time right now,” our father said.
“She left,” Sharla said. “For no reason.”
No one said anything else for a long time. And then my father said, “I believe she thinks she has reasons.”
“Dad,” Sharla said. “Please, can we just not see her for a while? I need some time away from her.”
We hadn’t seen her very often, only a few visits to her house and the time at the restaurant. But I knew what Sharla meant. Whenever we saw our mother, something always happened that made us uncomfortable. One night, Jasmine had shown up, seeming to surprise my mother. “Oh!” she’d said, after she opened the door. “Jasmine! But … well, the girls are here.”
“Oh, God,” Jasmine said. Then their voices got too low for us to hear. And then Jasmine came into the little kitchen.
I’d forgotten how darkly beautiful she was, how exotic looking.
“How are you?” she’d asked us, kissing our cheeks. Her perfume was spicy, overpowering.
“Fine,” Sharla said, staring down at her plate.
“I wish you’d come and visit me sometime,” Jasmine said.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“I’ve got to give you the address,” she said. But she left a few minutes later without doing so.
“We get together quite a bit,” my mother said, sitting down at the table after Jasmine had left. “We do things, you know, movies …”
“Dad got a raise,” Sharla said.
“Did he?”
“Yup.” She loaded up a fork with macaroni and cheese, talked through it. “A big one.” She put more in her mouth, then said, “Ishn’t that good?”
I watched my mother watching her. “Sharla,” she said finally, and I knew what she meant: Don’t talk with your mouth full.
“What?” Sharla said.
My mother looked away, said nothing more. I felt sorry for her for a moment; then the softness in my stomach turned to a hard knot of contempt.
When I was out jogging last week, I saw a woman walking a dog. Only it was the classic case of the dog walking her. The woman was laughing a bit, taking giant strides in an effort to keep up, but she was clearly embarrassed. The dog strained at the leash; the woman’s arm looked practically pulled out of the socket. I wanted to go over there and jerk that leash out of the woman’s hands, smack the dog’s butt with it. “Don’t let him do that!” I wanted to say. “Why are you letting him do that?”
I was a bit surprised by my strong reaction: for one thing, it was none of my business. But I think my response was tied up with things like what I just remembered, that feeling of contempt you have for someone you see is not in control when you want them to be.
It’s funny how, oftentimes, the people you love the most are given the least margin for error. Funny, too, the places where the anger ends up surfacing.
Later on that Christmas Eve when Sharla and I left without seeing her, our mother called us. She asked that Sharla and I each get on an extension. Then she asked if we had opened our presents.
“No,” Sharla said, and I followed quickly with, “We’re waiting for tomorrow.”
“I kind of wanted to be there when you opened them,” my mother said.
Neither Sharla nor I said anything. Georgia was coming on Christmas Day. We had plans.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel you were able to come up,” she continued. “I’m not blaming you—it’s been awkward. You know, we’re all just going to have to go through this time of transition. It’s hard. I’m sure all of us have said or done things we wish we hadn’t. But we’ll get through this. I want you both to know I love you very much. Nothing you can do will ever change that. We’ll get through this.”
Silence. I remember thinking, we’re through it. You’re the only one who’s having trouble.
“Could you maybe open your presents now, so I could at least hear you doing it?”
“I’ll get them,” I said quickly, before Sharla could refuse. I brought Sharla’s gift to her in the living