A Mother's Love by Mary Morris

Author:Mary Morris [Morris, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80998-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

EVERYTHING I DO is in doses. Measured restraint. Pieces at a time, as if I am fitting together a mosaic that is becoming more and more my life. A bit of reading, a snippet of conversation, a fragment of a film, a thought sliced like an onion. Memory is divided by feedings and wails. Cries in the night. Interruption has become a way of life: moments are cut into the portions of a pie.

I’ve been able to do more work at home. The Museum of Natural History has sent me some Native American pieces, and Mike has been sending me more projects than I can handle. He says we must be coming out of the recession because the jewelry business is back, and he seems to have plenty for me to do. “Stay home, Ivy,” he tells me over the phone. “You get more done there.” What he really means is that it’s easier for everyone if I work at home.

For days at a time I don’t go into the street. Whatever I need from the outside world I have sent to me, delivered by boys holding afterschool jobs. Chinese men with moist palms and no English appear at my door with steaming rice. Boys, earning their allowances, bring me videos at night. Hispanics now come for the laundry or drop off staples. Pizzas, Enfamil, bagels, entertainment; for the price of a tip, all this is brought to my door, to the door of a woman who was once accustomed to going anywhere at any time. The delivery boys eye me strangely, not with lust but with questions, as if I am a shut-in. Then they see the baby and they understand that this is true. I keep rolls of quarters by the door. Sometimes the only way I can be sure I am still in the world is the click the quarters make in their hands. I know them all by name. Tomás, Chen, Juan, LeRoy. The video store sends me either Jesús or Moses; I consider this to be a hopeful sign.

I have taken to watching mysteries late at night. Hitchcock, Christie, whatever I can order in. The man at the video store knows me and helps with my selections. “Mrs. Slovak,” he says, hearing the baby crying in the background, “this one you won’t be able to figure out.” But I always do. The wife is the obvious suspect. Or the old friend. Or the husband trying to drive his wife insane. The lawyers who sleep with their clients; these I suspect right away. The red herrings, the twists of plot, the missing links; I know them. I am so good at this it frightens me, as if it’s a calling I’ve missed, a talent, an activity I have a strange propensity for.

As I feed Bobby, a woman kills her husband with the frozen leg of lamb, then serves it to the detectives. They devour the murder weapon, the woman having brought off the perfect crime. What would I do under similar circumstances? I ask myself.

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.