She sighs. “There is no Marley. I got mad, and I’m sorry for that. But you need to grow up. No more Marley. Now, are you ready to read?”
I look up from the book. “I can read it by myself.” It’s true. It’s been true for a long time—I just hadn’t realized.
“I could read to you anyway.” She looks sad, sitting there on the edge of my bed. Part of me wants to hug her. But my legs are still burning from my whipping, and Marley’s gone, and in that moment, I love my mother and I hate her in equal measure.
“That’s okay,” I say, keeping my eyes on the page, even though right now I’m not making sense of any of the letters. “But thanks anyway.”
She lifts her hand as if to stroke my hair, then lets it fall onto the blanket between us. I pretend she isn’t there, that I’m all alone with the book. When she sighs again and leaves me, I bite my lip to stop calling out after her. And when the door closes behind her, with a barely audible click, I know that if I have punished her for taking Marley from me, then I have also punished myself.
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
2017
Chapter Two
Time for me is not linear. It flows in random loops and swirls, and sometimes in huge, incomprehensible leaps. I have entertained the possibility that I possess my own personal wormhole that opens into an alternate time continuum whenever I’m engaged in an activity of interest. Reading, say, or messing around with paint.
Today, for example, I swear it has only been two minutes of normal human time since I sat down to delve into the lusciously fat, solid, fantasy novel I bought yesterday. It can’t be more than two minutes, but the clock on the wall has mysteriously moved forward by fives and tens.
The bacon I laid in a pan on the stove before picking up the book has gone from cold and flabby and streaked with white to black and crusty and on fire in a time span that is a matter of mystery. I can’t ponder the vagaries of time, though. I must face the shrill reality of a smoke-filled kitchen. Indecisive as usual, I’m torn between extinguishing the fire that has ignited in the spattering fat and doing something—anything—to stop the brain-blasting noise from the fire alarm over my head.
Fire first. Always.
Pinpricks of overheated oil spatter my hands and arms as I reach to put a lid over the pan and turn off the burner. My mother would have a fit. Thirty-nine years old and I can still hear her voice in my head, as clearly as if she’s in the room with me. Can see her plant both hands on her angular hips, tilt her head to the right just enough to let her hair graze her shoulder, and pin me with the gaze of disappointment.
You must learn to focus, Maisey. One thing at a time. When you are cooking, cook. When you are studying, study. When you are cleaning, clean. You must learn this skill if you want to succeed.
It’s an old lecture, one that follows me back as far into my childhood as I have memories. It’s as pointless now as it ever was. I am incapable of this type of unified purpose. My mother’s concept of success mystifies me as thoroughly as the idea of a straight line through time.
My daughter, on the other hand, was born practical. No hesitation there, no scattered thoughts and indecision. She arrows into the room, focused and efficient.
“Again?” she shouts, loud enough to be heard over the blaring screech.
She drags a chair across the kitchen and climbs up on it. It strikes me, as she stretches for the smoke detector, how much she’s grown. The last time we played out this scenario her fingers barely grazed the plastic, and she had to stand on tiptoe. How long ago was that? Her T-shirt pulls tight against her chest, and I can see the unmistakable beginnings of breasts.
“What?” she asks into a sudden silence, the battery in one hand, the detector in the other.
I realize I’m staring, shattered by the realization that my baby is going to be a teen, only a few more months, and then the separation and the fighting and where will I be when she leaves me to follow her own life? Don’t leave me, Elle. Don’t ever leave me.
When I don’t answer, she scrambles down and does all the things I should have done.
Opens a window.
Turns on the exhaust fan.
Gets out a cloth and the dish soap and starts cleaning up the greasy mess all over the stove.
“Seriously, Mom. You can’t be trusted to cook and read at the same time. How many times have we had this conversation?”
She sounds exactly like my mother, which reminds me, belatedly, that I am the mother and Elle is still a child.
“Here, I’ll do that.” I take the cloth from her hand and scrub the stove top. I’m focused enough now, my senses full of acrid smoke and the burning patches on my arms and the lump in the back of my throat.
Elle makes a choking noise and opens the front door. Fresh, June-scented air flows into the kitchen, swirling the smoke.
“Why are you making bacon anyway?” she demands. “What happened to salad for dinner? I thought that was the new normal.”
“The new normal is me being allowed to deviate from routine.”
“Oh, please. That’s the old normal.” She snorts, a disgusted chiding sort of snort, and then, unexpectedly, she bursts into a fit of helpless giggles. “You are incorrigible. And I love you that way.”
She dances across the kitchen and hugs me. I can’t fit her head under my chin anymore, she’s gotten so tall. Another inch and she’ll be looking me level in the eyes.
“Where did you learn that word?” I mumble against her hair, holding on to her as if she’s going to dissolve into the bacon smoke and be lost to me, a wraith, a memory.
“My English teacher wrote it on my last paper.”
“Oh dear. You need to pass English, Elle Belle.” I release the hug and tilt her chin up. Her eyes are the same changeable hazel as my mother’s—mosaic eyes, pixels of jade and mahogany, eyes that could mislead a casual acquaintance into overlooking the single-minded iron will behind them. My eyes can be blue or green, depending on the light. My father’s are gray. My genetics are as off-kilter as my sense of time.
“Mrs. Wilson needs to stop giving out such stupid assignments,” Elle retorts. “I am not going to waste my time writing about my summer vacation.” She makes air quotes around the last three words, her voice a mockery of her teacher’s.
“What exactly did you write?”
“A short story. Can we go out for dinner?”
“Now who is deviating from normal?” She is evading me, and I know it. Mrs. Wilson will no doubt be emailing to let me know that my daughter is persisting in a path of defiance and attach a copy of the offending story.
But I also know that one of these days, inevitably, Elle will turn up her nose at the idea of dinner with her mother. Every day that she wants to be with me is a gift.
“All right. Let’s go for dinner. Mexican?”
“What happened to losing twenty pounds before you turn forty?”
“I have a month. Close that window and get your shoes. Let’s make sure the bacon fire is out, though.”
When my phone rings, I glance at it, but don’t answer. Nobody I know. The only people I ever really pick up the phone for are my parents, and not always even then.
Elle is not like me.
She answers before the second ring. “Yep, she’s here. Just a minute.”
Ignoring my exaggerated headshaking and my lips forming the words “I’m not here,” she holds out the phone. “It’s somebody called Mrs. Carlton,” she says, and the world collapses inward, all in soft-focus slow motion, like an earthquake in a movie.