What We Keep - Elizabeth Berg [80]
From the hall, I hear the pleasant banging of pots and pans. I enter the kitchen to see my mother standing at the sink with her back to me. She is humming softly to herself; she doesn’t know I’m here. But then she turns around quickly, gasps.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, it’s just … Well, I wanted to have dinner all ready, so we could sit down and really talk, without distractions. And I guess … I don’t know, I guess I’m a little nervous.”
“Why don’t you let me help you?” I ask. “I want to play with your fancy stuff.” My mother has a kitchen right out of a decorating magazine: smaller, perhaps, but as well-equipped and as beautiful: professional-looking pans hanging from a cook’s rack, a subzero refrigerator, granite counters, a Garland stove, little sinks within sinks.
She smiles, hands me a grater and a few peeled carrots.
“For the sauce,” she says. “I’m making eggplant parmigiana; I put carrots in to sweeten it a bit. Also a little honey. Do you ever do that, Ginny?”
And now something happens for which I have no explanation whatsoever: I feel my legs weaken, buckle beneath me, and suddenly I am sitting on the floor.
My mother rushes over to me, and then Sharla, too, who has just come into the kitchen. “What happened?” my mother says. “What happened here?”
“I’m fine,” I say, and start to get up. But then I feel a bit dizzy, so I sit back down. Well, I got almost no sleep last night; that’s all it is. The scotch I had on the plane, that’s what it is.
My mother takes the grater out of my hand. “Did you slip? Is the floor wet?”
Sharla sits down beside me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine!” I say. “I don’t know what happened! I was just all of a sudden on the floor!” I look around myself. “Which is not such a bad place to be. It’s nice down here. I like your tiles, Mom.”
My mother sits down on the floor with us. “Mexican,” she says. “I like them much better than the Italian.”
“Your whole house is so beautiful,” I say.
“Thank you.”
“You must make a fortune.”
She smiles. “I do all right. Just in the last couple years, though.” She reaches up on the counter for the carrots I was going to grate, gives us each one. “Eat this,” she tells me. “Maybe you’re too hungry.”
“Did you do all the paintings in here?” I ask.
My mother takes a bite of her carrot. “All but three,” she says. “Some friends did the one in your room and two of the ones in the dining room.”
“Huh,” I say. And then, “Mom, are you sick?”
My mother looks quickly at Sharla, who looks murderously at me. Then Sharla says quietly, “I’m sorry. I had to tell her.”
“Well,” my mother says. “Apparently so. But I’ve got a while before the train leaves the station. And I’m so glad you’re here.” She takes a deep breath, smiles. “Gosh. I don’t know how in the world we’ll say all we need to.”
A long moment. Finally, I stand, reach for an open bottle of wine, bring it down to our impromptu social circle. I sniff it. “Is this any good?”
My mother nods. “I’ll get some glasses.”
“Don’t bother.” I take a swig from the bottle, then pass it to her.
She laughs, stares at me with a deep and clear affection. And then she takes a drink and passes the bottle to Sharla.
I lean back against the cupboard. “We could just stay here for the evening,” I say.
No one says anything for a long while. Birds twitter occasionally outside the kitchen windows. Otherwise, there is silence. We pass the bottle around the circle a few times, eat our carrots. Then Sharla says, “Well, I don’t know about you. But my ass is too old for this action.” She stands up. “Come on. Let’s go get comfortable.”
I’ll just finish dinner,” my mother says.
I turn off the flame under the saucepan. “Mom.”
She laughs. “Okay.” She removes her apron, picks up the phone, and dials a number. “Henry? It’s Marion. I need a big order as soon as you can get it here.” Then, to us, “Do you both still like Chinese?”
All around the TV room are tiny white boxes and empty wine bottles. Sharla has put her chopsticks in her hair to hold it off her neck; the effect is lovely. We are each lying