Bloody Mary by Sharon Solwitz

Author:Sharon Solwitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2012-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

At the sound of her mother’s feet on the stairs she tried to rise from the bed. Outside her window the light had turned black purple. She closed her eyes, pulling the corners of her mouth into the faint, pretty, dead smile of Snow White in her glass coffin as her mother wafted toward her. “Hadley,” she said, “what’s the matter, honey?”

Hadley tightened her closed eyes but increased very slightly the arc of her smile.

“I hope you’re not getting sick.” Her mother bent over the bed. She smelled of clay and the heavily sweet chemical soap she used to wash the clay off her hands. “Hadley, talk to me.” She put a dry, fragrant hand to her forehead. “You’re cool.”

“Yes,” Hadley whispered. “I’m really cool.”

The hand lifted. “Hadley, I want you to get up now. It’s almost dinnertime.”

Hadley wanted to cry. To open her arms to her mother and put her face into the sweet-smelling niche under her chin and sob like a baby. Instead she opened her eyes wide and hard and dry. She imagined her eyes saying to her mother, you don’t deserve to be alive standing in front of me on this planet.

“Nora’s gone. There’s just the two of us tonight,” her mother said. “Let’s go downstairs. Would you mind setting the table?”

“Where’s Dad?”

“He’s driving her. And some of the team, actually. A carful of fast girls!”

“He didn’t say goodbye to me.”

“You were asleep. What’s going on, Hadley? You’re acting strange.”

Hadley put her thumb in her mouth like a baby. She giggled. “I am strange.”

Her mother laughed. “I wouldn’t brag about it.”

“I’m eating at Rachel’s,” Hadley said. “I’m sleeping at Rachel’s.”

“You are? I don’t recall being asked.”

Hadley stretched. Tried to wake up. Her mother bent over and kissed her forehead. “So you’re going to leave me completely alone tonight? What will I do all by myself?”

Hadley looked at her with an odd gap where her reactions were supposed to be. Her stomach felt light and airy, as if nothing could ever have been wrong with it and could never be. Maybe she didn’t even have a stomach down there. She groped for words that sounded like normal words. “You can call up one of your girlfriends?”

Her mother smiled. “That’s all right. Get your things together. I guess you want me to drive you.”

“You can call Eileen,” Hadley said.

“That’s okay. Thanks, dear.”

As her mother left the room, it occurred to Hadley that her mother sounded a little strange. She was at least in a strangely good mood.

Half an hour later Hadley walked down to the kitchen with her sleeping bag and her overnight case. Her mother was talking on the phone. Hadley brought her gear over to the front door, transfixed by her mother, the tilt of her head, the low, amused purr of her voice, her shining black hair. Hadley walked into the downstairs washroom and looked at her own face in the vanity mirror. Her hair looked flat, mousy. She fluffed it with the fingers of both hands, then leaned over, let it fall down to the floor and fluffed it out again.

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