Cornerstone (The Cornerstone Series) by Provencher Misty

Author:Provencher, Misty [Provencher, Misty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-06T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Dinner is a funeral. Although my mom settles down, she asks Mr. and Mrs. Reese to wait until after we eat to discuss ‘this whole thing’. Which is me. Me, bringing the world down in flames. It makes it a little impossible to eat. I just push my food around and wait for everyone else to finish.

Garrett sits on one side of me, eating slowly, his leg close enough to mine that wiry sparks of heat are trapped between us. On the other side, my mom is a stone, not eating what’s in front of her either.

The only one that seems completely unaffected by any of this is Iris. She slurps her milk and tells jokes that don’t make sense, swallowing only if the food gets in the way of her talking. With every punch line, she laughs until her face turns magenta and it’s hard to tell if she’s wildly amused or choking. It must be pretty normal because the Reese’s don’t seem bothered by it. In fact, they ignore her even as she twists her head from side to side, looking for an admiring audience. The ponytail plume on her head dances with her gerbil-ish attention span.

“E-vanch-line,” she calls over the table to my mom. “What’d the chicken say to the potatoes?”

My mom, with puffy eyes, tries to smile. “I don’t know. What did it say, honey?”

“It says eat the greens beans!” Iris squeals and she stuffs her mouth full of beans, laughing. My mom pushes out a flat laugh and lets her weak smile fall into her lap. When Iris calls my mom’s name again, Mrs. Reese taps her daughter’s hand.

“Enough jokes, Iris.” she says. “Finish your dinner.”

The rest of the meal is quiet. When the Reese’s are finished, the four boys get to their feet and clear away their dishes.

“You didn’t eat nothing.” Iris says to my mother as she slides off her chair.

“You didn’t eat anything.” Mr. Reese corrects her, but then Iris shrugs and leaves. She was right. My mother’s plate is untouched, but Garrett carries it away without another word. My mom starts mumbling beside me.

“Bart Cubulick, ninety-three, thought of his mother everyday; Phi Tan, eighty-six, fished for his family without complaint; Shelly Lennon, twelve...”

I listen to my mother’s feverish simmer of useless names and stories and every word she speaks becomes a pair of sharp, fierce teeth gnawing at my stomach. She hasn’t explained anything to me. All she’s done is cry on Mr. Reese’s shoulder as if I am her personal tragedy.

Feeling so cut off from her is like swimming in the pit of a well. I’m struggling to figure out what is going on and she isn’t even trying to help keep my head above water. When our house was on the verge of being condemned due to the amount of paper, she’d said a change of view would be nice. When we ran out of money and had to go on welfare, she said we might as well get a little back from all the taxes we’d paid in.

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