Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne

Author:James Lecesne
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250106100
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

thirteen

MOM DIDN’T INTEND to close up the shop. Her original plan was to wake up early, get busy with appointments, and hopefully forget that people were searching the lake for Leonard’s body. But when her first customer of the day, Mrs. Artman, jokingly accused Mom of rolling her curlers too tight as a way of giving her a natural face-lift, Mom threw down the tools of her trade and stomped upstairs to her room.

I finished up Mrs. Artman and then called the rest of Mom’s customers to reschedule. Everyone was very understanding. I spent the rest of the day trying to distract myself by reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Every time the phone rang, I held my breath; even Lady Chatterley’s orgasm, which is described by D. H. Lawrence as a kind of rippling brilliance with flapping feathers, couldn’t hold my attention. I listened with all my senses until I heard Mom’s voice reassuring the person on the other end of the line that nothing had happened—nothing yet. No word. And then I went back to the shuddering convulsions of Lady Chatterley’s molten insides.

At about five o’clock, Chuck’s car pulled up in front of our house. Through the living-room window, I watched him get out and walk toward the house looking like bad news in shorts and hiking boots.

Of course he would come by in person. Chuck wasn’t the type to make you cry over the phone, then hang up and leave you so that you could wander around the room, trying to figure out what to do next.

“Mom!” I called upstairs, trying to sound as normal as any kid in a TV sitcom. I opened the front door for Chuck before he even had a chance to ring the bell. He just stood there looking at me. That’s when I knew. His blue eyes were brimming with the lake and everything that he’d seen down there. The corners of his mouth were turned down in what I would call an expression of grim determination. He didn’t need to say a word.

Mom came down the stairs slowly, carefully, like a blind person feeling her way along the banister. When she reached the bottom step, she looked up at Chuck and her legs just gave way and folded underneath her. She fell onto the first step and sat there, looking horribly helpless and small. When she finally let out a loud, unruly wail, the hairs on my neck and arms stood up like the tiny antennae of a bug trying to figure out the best direction forward.

Chuck tried to speak, but every time he opened his mouth, Mom said, “No.” She said it a lot. She said it so many times that Chuck finally gave up trying to offer his condolences or to explain anything.

Deirdre, who had rushed downstairs when she heard Mom’s first anguished cry, tried to take control of the situation.

“Pheebs! Get Mom some water. Hurry!”

By the time I came back from the kitchen, sloshing the water over the rim

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