Believe Them by Mary Robison

Author:Mary Robison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092044
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

“WAFFLES!” COACH SHOUTED, NOT KNOWING if anyone was home. He slugged his gym bag onto the kitchen counter, which was already heaped with cleaning fluids and rags, fresh shelf liner in cellophane rolls, tissue-wrapped plates and drinking glasses.

“Coming,” said Sherry’s voice from another downstairs room. Coach couldn’t tell which room in particular.

He rooted through packaging, and an unfamiliar cabinet, and, last, a utensils drawer. He gathered a big mixing bowl, a whisk, a spatula, Bisquick. He made batter and poured a puddle onto a Teflon-coated waffle iron that he’d plugged in and brought to full heat. He started a coil burner on the electric stove at the kitchen’s center. He flicked on the intensity light and the odors fan in the stove’s ceiling-dropped hood. He was peeling bacon strips into a skillet when Daphne arrived at the back door.

“Aha!” she said. “I was right, as always.”

“Shut the door, Daph. You’ll let flies in. What were you right about?”

“That Mom wouldn’t be here, so you’d be fixing some in-between-meal snack,” said Daphne. She stood next to Coach at the stove. She picked up a two-tined fork and straightened his bacon pieces for him.

“I am so here!” Sherry said, appearing behind Daphne at the kitchen’s entranceway.

“Holy Christ!” Daphne said.

“Daphne, do you have to say ‘Christ’ all the time?” Coach asked.

“Nope, not all the time. Only when Mom sneaks up behind me. Only when she floods my system with massive amounts of adrenaline.”

“Name me a time when I’m not here,” Sherry said. She circled the kitchen, tidying up. She tossed out a punctured, emptied V-8 juice can. She used paper towels to wipe a long tearlike dribble of waffle batter from the face of a cabinet.

Daphne had wandered with her fork to the kitchen’s back door and was watching out the newly repaned window with its tape and chalk marks. “Still there,” she said. “This stray dog that’s mooching around on the steps. He followed me all the way home.” Daphne had come from swimming at the college’s natatorium. Her red hair was still damp, hanging in ringlets.

“Walleyed? Yeah, I know him,” Coach said. “You should let him inside, for protective custody. Everybody in this neighborhood’s after his ass.”

“Maybe when I’m through eating,” Daphne said.

“Want to come see my bedroom?” Sherry asked Coach.

“So you did that? Made a room up for yourself down here,” he said.

Daphne said, “Separate bedrooms? Uh oh. Time to write ‘Dear Abby,’ Dad.”

“Butt out, Daphne. It’s nothing like that,” Sherry said. “Coach and I have different needs, different schedules, for one.”

Daphne’s head tilted, skeptically.

Sherry said, “I tend to get a second wind, late at night, and when I do, I require a work area. I have ideas I have to put to paper, sometimes occurring at three a.m. I want to work guiltlessly.”

Sherry was an amateur sculptor and painter.

“Food first,” Coach said. “Then you give me the tour.”

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