English Made Easy by Kevin Moffett

Author:Kevin Moffett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

She buys a blank book and rubber cement and sheets of hard-stock paper for descriptions and whatever else she might write. She buys photo corner tabs. She buys an exceptionally nice pen in a plastic casket. She realizes she’s just indulging Andrew’s sister and herself, but it doesn’t bother her. In fact, the preparations are strangely consoling. It’s as if she’s assembling an alibi. When Andrew’s sister calls, she knows exactly what to tell her.

Andrew’s sister calls. Lena’s napping on the couch with Lyle sprawled across the crook of her arm. She ignores the phone until the ringing dies, and then it awakens a few seconds later and rings again. Zombie rings, Lena thinks. Her shoulder and arm are asleep and moist with sweat.

“Listen to this,” Beth says. Lena listens to the angry cracking of ice cubes being freed from their tray. She waits for it to stop, waits for Lyle to start stirring on her lap. Then there’s a click and Lena hears two children’s voices, a boy and a girl. They’re arguing about what to watch on TV and pretty soon the boy’s yelling at the girl: “Watch what you want! Watch what you want!”

Another click and Beth comes on the line. “It’s him, it’s Andrew. I used to hide a tape recorder and then start an argument, and play it back afterward. He hated it.”

“What a terrible thing to do to somebody,” Lena says.

“That isn’t the point of my story, Lena. I’m finding all kinds of loot like this in my attic. It’ll be perfect for the book.” A sip and a colossal swallow. Lena’s mouth is suddenly dry. She lays Lyle on the couch, sets her nursing pillow next to him so he doesn’t fall off, and goes into the kitchen. She pours a glass of wine while Andrew’s sister tells her about all the things she found in her attic: tapes, drawings, letters, photographs.

Lena, too, went through a box of her pictures the other day, after which she put them on the highest shelf in the house. So many pictures. It was as if she knew something bad was going to happen, overdocumenting their past together to augur her togetherless future. Look here, remember this. She wishes she were a druid, or an ancient Eskimo, someone with a past that’s an unbroken slur of labor and meals and darkness and seasons and fires. None of the pictures are real. They don’t capture anything as it happened or as she remembers it happening. They’re just pictures of people having their pictures taken.

“Good or bad, he was always himself,” Beth says. “We need to make sure we show that in our book.”

“I’m writing it down right now,” Lena says, pouring another glass of wine. “He . . . was . . . always . . . himself.”

“All right then. I gotta go get Cal from the stupid chiropractor. Can I talk to Lyle real quick?”

Lena looks over at Lyle, still asleep on the couch. “Here he is,” she says.

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