Appetite by Sheila Grinell

Author:Sheila Grinell [Grinell, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631520228
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2016-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

She sat in semidarkness at the dining room table waiting for Paul. He’d missed dinner, said something got screwed up at the lab. She stared at the plate with the now cold chicken leg sitting atop a mound of pilaf. Jenn had eaten most of the meal at the table with her, and everything would have been normal, almost, if Paul had come home. She rehearsed what she wanted to say yet another time.

A car crunched gravel in the driveway, door slammed, footsteps in the mudroom and through the kitchen. She rose and turned on the dining room light. Paul approached, looking disheveled.

“Sorry. Couldn’t be helped. Looks good.” He sat at the place she had set for him and picked up knife and fork. He never washed the lab off his hands before a meal, although he knew it made her feel squeamish.

“You should have come home. Jenn ate a real meal.” This was not how she had planned to start the conversation, but his indifference annoyed her. She took a deep breath.

“Jenn has been talking to Sarah. She wants to spend the summer in California, and Sarah said yes.”

“Good for Jenn. Change of scenery will do her more good than sitting on a couch complaining.” He loaded the fork; it went zing as his teeth scraped off the food. He chewed hard and prepared another mouthful.

“How can you be so arrogant? Haven’t you noticed therapy’s making her better?”

“Maybe she’s getting better on her own. Healing is built into the system. Maggie, I’m tired, I don’t want to argue.”

“And I don’t want a biology lesson.” She got up and walked into the dark living room. She leaned against the mantelpiece and absently fingered the soapstone talisman Sarah had sent from a business trip to the Pacific Northwest. She would tell Jenn yes; she could go to California if she passed all her classes and continued therapy. Not because her father approved of the trip but because her mother honored her desires. Because her mother paid attention to her heart as well as her mind and body.

That night, in the hours she was able to sleep, with Paul oblivious beside her, she dreamed again about finals week at college. She had forgotten to study and misplaced her books, and no one would answer her questions about where to take the test, and a lake appeared between the buildings and so on and so on, one obstacle after another. Waking, she recognized the state of mind her dream reflected: guilty, afraid of not meeting her obligations. She would beat back the dream. Above all else, she would keep Jenn safe.

Paul snorted and rolled toward her. She suppressed the urge to shake him. Why was he being such a damn know-it-all about therapy? He had no precious data from which to extrapolate, and no expertise. He acted as if no opinion mattered but his. In this arena, he was inadequate. He deeply disappointed her. She felt a coolness toward him spread from her head to her heart.

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.