A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom

Author:Amy Bloom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307417855
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2000-07-11T20:00:00+00:00

Julia starts cooking at six a.m. Early Thanksgiving morning is the only time she will have to herself. The rest of the day will be a joy, most likely, and so tiring that when Buster and Jewelle leave on Friday, right after Corinne is wrapped up in her safety seat belt and Jordan squirms around for one last good-bye and their new car crunches down the gravel driveway, Julia will lie down with a cup of tea and not get up until the next day, when she will say good-bye to Lionel and Ari and lie down again. She reads Jewelle’s detailed note and thinks, Poor Jewelle must be thirty-one, it’s probably time for her to have Thanksgiving in her own house. Julia had to wrestle the holiday out of her own mother’s hands; even as the woman lay dying she whispered directions for gravy and pumpkin pie, creating a chain of panicked, resentful command from bedroom to kitchen, with a daughter, a husband, and two sisters slicing and basting to beat back the inevitable. Julia managed to celebrate one whole independent Thanksgiving, with four other newly hatched adults, only to marry Lionel Senior the next summer and find the holiday permanently ensconced, like a small museum’s only Rodin, at her new mother-in-law’s house. Julia can sit now in her own kitchen, sixty years old with a dish towel in her hand, and hear Ruth Sampson saying to her, “My son is not cut from the same cloth as other people. You treat him right.”

After this last, unexpected hurrah, Julia will let go of Thanksgiving altogether. She’ll arrive at Jewelle’s house, or Jewelle’s mother’s house, at just the right time, and entertain the children, and bring her own excellent lemon meringue pies and extravagant flowers to match their tablecloths. If things go well, maybe she’ll bring Peter too. As Julia pictures Peter entering Buster’s front hall by her side, the two of them with bags of presents and a box of butter tarts, she cuts a wide white scoop through the end of her forefinger. Blood flows so fast it pools on the cutting board and drips onto the counter before she has even realized what the pain is.

“Ma.” Lionel is behind her with paper towels. He packs her finger until it’s the size of a dinner roll and pulls it up over her head. “You stay like that. Sit. And keep your hand up.”

“You’re up early. The Band-Aids are in my bathroom.” Her fingertip is throbbing like a heart, and Julia holds it aloft. It’s been a long time since anyone has told her to do anything.

Her bathrobe always lies at the foot of the bed. There is always a pale blue quilt, and both nightstands are covered with books and magazines and empty teacups. The room smells like her. Lionel takes the Band-Aids from under the sink: styling mousse, Neosporin ointment (which he also takes), aloe vera gel, Northern Lights shampoo for silver hair, two bottles of Pepto-Bismol, ajar of vitamin C, zinc lozenges, and a small plastic box of silver bobby pins.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.