A Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds

Author:Sheri Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307788900
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-30T07:00:00+00:00

THIS IS ALL I got,” I tell William Blott. “It’s all I could tote. I hope it helps.”

But he’s not interested in the load I’ve dropped inside his tomb.

“You want me to arrange it for you?”

Still no answer. And I’m getting fed up with these dead. Marcus, who screams but won’t tell me what he wants—and now William, who slumps and broods, his silence heavy like the cloud of smoke that follows a hydrogen bomb. I am tired of not getting answers.

I lean the pictures up against the walls. There is one of a toothless woman making a bowl from clay, another of a man with one arm, standing beneath the awning of a barn. There’s a picture of a woman, swaddled to a stretcher, stomach down and playing a keyboard with her tongue.

The pictures aren’t even exceptional. They are blurred and out of focus, overdeveloped and underdeveloped, softened and streaked by rain, and I’m amazed that I can touch them at all. I am dead weary and suddenly I just want to go to a movie where the pictures are crisp and in color, where everything gets settled in just a matter of hours. I don’t even want to talk to Lucy or the Mediator, who’ve gone about their work now, leaving William to grieve, Marcus to cling to his legs and hiccup.

I lean the violin in one corner and sit the horn on the stone that notes his dates of birth and death. I don’t know what to do with the dress. I lay it on the ground like a rug, but it looks funny that way. So I pick it up.

“Do you want this dress?” I ask him.

No answer.

“You know, I was up half the night getting these things. You could say thank you.”

No answer.

“Fine,” I say. “I’m leaving.” I take a deep breath and turn away, the dress still thrown over my shoulder. I don’t even know where the nearest movie theater is, but that’s where I’m going. To the movies. Right now.

“Thank you,” William calls weakly. Then he adds, “Is the dress your size?”

“Oh,” I say, and walk back to leave it with him.

“You wear it,” he says sadly. “I don’t need it here.”

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