“Oh.” Mom’s face fell. “I thought—”
“There might have been some confusion for a while, but that’s all been straightened out. I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Then how about finally going out with that nice young man from the plant?”
Not this again. Every mother of a single daughter in town laid awake nights scheming on how her daughter could catch the eye of Garrett Boltinghouse.
“He’s successful, friendly, well-respected, takes good care of his mother—without living in her basement. It’s a bunch of green flags, as far as I can see.”
Yeah, but he was also Jeremy Hotston’s cousin. That was the only red flag I needed.
“And he’s athletic. Do you remember when he threw that wonderful touchdown pass during your last home football game during your senior year? I’m sure he’d be interested if you’d pay him some attention. You’re quite a catch yourself.”
“Mom, how is Angelica?”
“You’re changing the subject.”
Yeah, to the topic that was always a surefire exit from whatever I didn’t want to talk about, especially Garrett Boltinghouse. “When is her surgery? I want to go down and stay with her for that.”
“It’s the same day as your autumn showcase for the gymnastics class.”
“What? No!” Since when were surgeries scheduled for Saturdays? “I need to be there with her.”
“She has her husband. She has her mother.” Mom patted my arm with a soothing touch.
“Wait. You’re going?”
“No, but …”
See? That’s what I thought. “She’ll heal so much faster if I’m there. I can do all the cooking, the cleaning, the fetching, the pill-counting.”
“All she needs is her husband. The wedding wasn’t yesterday. He knows how to care for her.”
“Is he taking off work?” Alarm rose in me, pitching higher and higher.
“I’m sure he is.”
But she didn’t know that. She hadn’t verified. I could only hear a dull squeal going off in my head. “I’m calling Tennille and asking her to handle the showcase. She’s been doing everything herself all this time. She can do one showcase.”
“Honey, the day-to-day is one thing. The showcase is another.”
“Mom, this is Angelica’s surgery. Her big chance to walk normally for the first time since she was six years old.” Since that I won’t use the term in polite company and I am polite company so I won’t use it even in my head of a prankster spread cooking oil on the balance beam at Angelica’s gymnastics class, and she’d fallen onto her leg with such a twisting break to both femur and hip, including a puncture wound, that the doctors feared she wouldn’t live.
All the bleeding.
She’d lived, but she never walked well, and she certainly never got to live out her childhood dream of becoming a gymnast.
I was only a small child, and the family barely whispered about it, but over the years, I’d pieced together the details.
And I’d gone into gymnastics—by proxy.
And I hated pranksters. Forever.
“I’m going to Reedsville. And I’m taking care of her.”
Mom watched while I stomped up to my front door. While I was at the stoop putting the key in the lock, she rolled down her window and called to me, “Don’t you want these groceries? Are you giving up on your cooking dream?”
“Take them to the women’s shelter.” One of them probably knew how to cook.