“You quit that job. Thank God! I always thought you could do better.”
“I didn't quit my job. I just need a change.”
“I have the sewing machine and the ironing board in your room. You said you'd never come home.”
I had both arms wrapped around the hamster cage. “I was wrong. I'm home. I'll make do.”
“Frank,” my mother yelled. “Come help Stephanie, she's moving in with us again.”
I nudged my way past her and started up the stairs. “Only for a few days. It's temporary.”
“Stella Lombardi's daughter said that same thing, and three years later she's still living with them.”
I felt a scream starting somewhere deep inside.
“If you'd given me some notice, I'd have cleaned,” my mother said. “I'd have gotten a new bedspread.”
I pushed the door open with my knee. “I don't need a new bedspread. This one is fine.” I maneuvered around the clutter in the small room and set Rex on the bed while I cleaned off the top of the single dresser. “How's Grandma?”
“She's taking a nap.”
“Not no more I'm not,” Grandma said from inside her room. “There's enough noise out there to wake the dead. What's going on?”
“Stephanie's moving back home.”
“Why'd she want to do a thing like that? It's damn boring here.” Grandma peeked into my room. “You aren't pregnant, are you?”
Grandma Mazur got her hair curled once a week. In between sets she must have slept with her head hanging over the side of the bed because the tight little rolls lost some precision as the week marched on, but never seemed totally disturbed. Today she looked like she'd spray-starched her hair and been put through a wind tunnel. Her dress was rumpled from sleep, she was wearing pink velour bedroom slippers, and her left hand was encased in bandage.
“How's your hand?” I asked.
“Starting to throb. Think I must need some more of them pills.”
Even with the ironing board and sewing machine occupying space, my room hadn't changed much in the past ten years. It was a small room with one window. The curtains were white with a rubberized backing. The first week in May they were exchanged for sheers. The walls were painted dusty rose. The trim was white. The double bed was covered with a quilted, pink-flowered bedspread, softened in texture and color by age and the spin cycle. I had a small closet, which was filled with seasonal clothes, a single maple dresser, and a maple nightstand with a milk-glass lamp. My high school graduation picture still hung on the wall. And a picture of me in my majorette uniform. I had never completely mastered the art of baton twirling, but I'd been perfection in boots when I'd strutted onto a football field. Once during a half-time show I'd lost control of my baton and flipped it into the trombone section. A shudder ripped through me at the memory.
I hauled the laundry basket up and stashed it in a corner, clothes and all. The house was filled with food smells and the clank of flatware being set. My father channel-surfed in the living room, raising the volume to compete with the kitchen activity.
“Shut it down,” my mother shouted at my father. “You'll make us all deaf.”
My father concentrated on the screen, pretending oblivion.
By the time I sat down to dinner my fillings were vibrating, and I'd developed a twitch in my left eye.
“Isn't this nice?” my mother said. “Everyone sitting down to dinner together. Too bad Valerie isn't here.”
My sister, Valerie, had been married to the same man for a hundred years and had two children. Valerie was the normal daughter.
Grandma Mazur was directly across from me and was downright frightening, with her hair still uncombed and her eyes focused inward. As my father would put it, her lights were on, but there was no one home.
“How much of that codeine has Grandma taken so far?” I asked my mother.
“Just one pill that I know of,” my mother said.
I felt my eye jump and put my finger to it. “She seems to be . . . disconnected.”
My father stopped buttering his bread and looked up. His mouth opened to say something, but he thought better of it and went back to buttering his
bread.