Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney

Author:Aoibheann Sweeney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2007-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

15

After a week or more had passed Robert was not quite as hostile to me as he had been at the start, but he continued to disagree with Walter at every opportunity. No matter how late Walter had been out the night before, he was always cheerful in the morning, and seemed to look forward to pouring me a weak cup of coffee as soon as I came into the kitchen. But as soon as he heard Robert on the stairs he got quieter, as if he was bracing himself. They would greet each other politely, but even as they spoke, they were constantly turning away from each other, furiously giving signals of disregard—reading the paper, getting up from the table just as a joke was being told.

“Is that library project keeping you busy, Miranda?” Walter would say, his manner suddenly stilted, while Robert pretended not to listen. It didn’t matter what I answered; I knew Walter was not speaking to me but to him. Not that he expected an answer from Robert either. Both of them were making a show of not needing answers. Robert was most convincing in this regard—at times I felt certain that he didn’t really care, and Walter’s glum disappointment would cut through me as keenly as if it were my own.

In a misguided effort to please Robert, I determined to get the kitchen working. It wasn’t hard to find a set of pots and pans in one of the discount stores that lined Fourteenth Street, but I had to go to various hardware stores to find the right replacements for the burners and an oven thermometer that I could suspend from the top rack. I had started wearing Julie’s dress again, the unstained one, which at least was cool; the sun had been beating down for days, and there wasn’t a breath of air to relieve it.

It was in this frame of mind, weary and pleasantly blank, that I finally stopped by the coffee cart for the second time. The woman inside had taken her hat off to fan herself, and her hair underneath was black and shiny. “Bet it doesn’t get this hot in Maine,” she said, pulling it back on with a tug.

“No,” I said, blushing before I knew it. She smiled, knowing she’d caught me off guard, as if it was an old trick.

“Where are you from?” I asked, rallying.

“Washington Heights,” she said, amused. “But I was born in the Dominican Republic, if that’s what you mean. You like it regular?”

“Black, please.”

I saw her glancing at my dress before she filled the cup and put it on the sill. “Sixty cents,” she said.

I gave her my change and she watched me lift the lid and take a sip.

“You can peel that little tab back you know,” she said.

I looked at my cup, not sure what she meant.

“On the lid,” she said, pointing, when I still didn’t see it, and then suddenly she had stepped out the back and was coming toward me.

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