The Honey Bus. Meredith May

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the house packing until she tired herself out, then he’d eventually get her to sit next to him on the couch to talk. He had a low soothing voice, and she was like a too-loud TV. From the top of the stairs, I’d listen until there was no more yelling and I heard her sniffling, the signal that the argument had passed and it was time for everybody to go back to sleep.

      I decided to wait Mom out this time. When she reappeared in my door frame with Matthew on her hip, I was still sitting like a question mark in bed.

      “Where are we going?”

      “Not now, Meredith. I’m in no mood.”

      Balancing my brother in one arm, she tugged off my pajamas and wrestled me into daytime clothes. Mom was scooting me toward the door when I turned back.

      “Can I bring Morris?”

      Morris was a stuffed pink cat with a skirt that my parents had bought at a drugstore on the way home from the navy hospital nursery after I was born. I had named him Morris after the cat in the TV commercial, and he was my most prized possession. I had grown so dependent on him, especially lately, that I couldn’t fall asleep if he wasn’t tucked under my arm. Mom nodded her permission, and I dug around my sheets, grabbing him just seconds before Mom led me out of the room by my wrist.

      As Mom was helping me into my coat in the hallway, Dad passed by, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He opened the front door and walked out into the chilly air. I ran to the living room window and watched as he started up the Volvo under the light of the porch. His breath came in silver puffs as he scraped frost from the windshield. I watched him lift the suitcase into the trunk and get into the driver’s seat while Mom strapped Matthew in the car seat and then came back inside for me. I clutched Morris closer to my chest, and rubbed my chin back and forth against the soft fleece of his pink ears.

      “Where are we going?” I asked again, softer this time. Mom zipped up my puffy jacket and put her hands on my shoulders.

      “California. To visit Granny and Grandpa.”

      Her voice warbled, but she forced a smile and I brightened just a bit. Last summer Granny and Grandpa came for a visit, and because they were guests there was no fighting in our house for a whole week. Grandpa and Dad took me to the beach and taught me how to bodysurf, letting the waves lift and slingshot me into the hissing foam until I glided to a stop on my belly in the sand. Grandpa put me on his shoulders and dug quahogs out of the mud with his toes, teaching me how to spot spurts of water where the clams were siphoning. We brought home a whole bucket and shucked them in the kitchen for dinner. Maybe there’d be quahogs in California.

      Inside the car, Mom turned away from Dad and drew wet lines on the frosty window with her finger. Matthew fell back asleep with his head bent toward me, his light brown hair falling into his eyes and his little red lips making a puff noise instead of an actual snore. Unlike me, who came into the world screaming, my brother arrived, blinked twice and smiled. Mom liked to say that I had apparently used up all the fussy and left none for him. It was true; Matthew’s soul was calm and trusting. He was a boy who assumed goodness in everyone. What three-year-old smiled while you took candy out of his hand, certain the game would end with something even better in return? I could feel Matthew’s trust in humankind when he curled his hand around my index finger and toddled in a tipsy lockstep with me, certain I wouldn’t let him fall. He followed me everywhere, plucking words out of my sentences and parroting them like my own personal backup singer. It was for those kinds of things that I loved him fiercely, even though he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. But he knew one word that bonded me to him for life. Whenever he awoke from a nap and saw me walk into his room, he’d stand and reach for me with chubby starfish hands.

      “Mare-miss!” he’d shout.

      I had a super fan, and his adoration gave me a profound sense of distinction.

      Dad shifted gears with punching force, and I hugged my knees to my chest and rocked in the back seat, silently willing someone to speak. Mom spoke just once on the ninety-minute drive to the airport in Boston; she asked Dad to detour to Fall River so she could stop at a friend’s house to say a quick goodbye. When we finally pulled into the airport parking lot, suddenly everything was moving too fast. Doors opened and slammed. The four of us speed-walked in silence. As the glass panels of the revolving door spun around us, I felt like I was falling down a well. I didn’t understand what was happening, other than it was big, and that I wasn’t supposed to ask about it. I grabbed Mom’s hand and held on.

      Dad bought our tickets and handed our suitcase to the woman behind the counter, and I watched it glide away on a conveyor belt and disappear through an opening in the wall. When we reached the gate, Dad brought me to the window and pointed out the plane we were going to take to visit Granny and Grandpa. It gleamed in the morning light, a sleek bird with upturned wings, and I felt a flutter inside, imagining myself soaring inside it. I peppered Dad with questions—how high would the plane go, how did it stay in the air, would he sit next to me? When it was time to board, Dad knelt down and squeezed me so hard that I felt him shaking.

      “You be good, kiddo,” he said, forcing a smile. “Love you.”

      My body suddenly turned cold. I felt something rip inside my stomach as Dad sank into an airport chair and Mom tugged me toward the door leading to the plane. This wasn’t right. Dad was supposed to come with us. Mom pulled me by the arm as I leaned in the opposite direction, unwilling to take another step without Dad.

      “Come ON,” she huffed.

      “What about Dad?” I demanded, digging in my heels. But she was stronger, and I was forced to hop in her direction as I struggled against her weight.

      “Don’t make a scene.”

      I let myself go slack. Conversation around me became muffled, like I was underwater. I fell silent, feeling myself get pulled into the breezeway, and when I looked back to find Dad, there were too many people behind me, blocking my view. My mind swirled as I let Mom steer me down the aisle and into a window seat, where I pressed my forehead to the chilly oval until I saw a tall figure with ink-black hair and plaid pants standing behind the plate glass of the terminal. Dad looked like he was in a television. I lifted my hand, but he didn’t see me. He didn’t move from his spot as the plane pushed back from the gate. I kept my eyes locked on him until he became smaller and smaller, until the plane turned away.

      During the flight, Mom blew smoke at the folding tray in front of her and picked at her copper-colored nail polish with trembling hands. She seemed to be crumbling. I snuck peeks at her while pretending to draw in the coloring book the stewardess had given me. Mom still looked pretty to me, but her skin seemed grayer under the overhead light. At home, she was careful about the way she looked, and never went outside without first covering her freckles with beige cream and putting shimmery blue shadow on her eyes. I liked to watch her ritual, and all the tools that came with it. A blow-dryer to make her short curly hair stand up higher, fat brushes to put pink powder on her cheeks, and that clamper thing she squeezed on her eyelashes to curl them up. Sometimes she’d let me choose her lipstick from dozens of tubes she kept in the bathroom. The final touch was a cloud of smelly spray all around her head, to make her hair stay in place.

      “It doesn’t matter if you’re a little chubby, as long as you have a pretty face,” she’d say, threading gold wire hoops through her ears. She never left the house with out her movie-star sunglasses, two big brown circles as large as drink coasters.

      Mom had some rolls around her middle but her legs were thin, so she covered her shape with dresses that had busy designs and loud colors. The dresses stopped above her knee, which made her look like a bouquet of flowers on two stems. I thought she was beautiful. My favorite СКАЧАТЬ