Family Linen by Lee Smith

Author:Lee Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-02-04T05:00:00+00:00

Sybill sits in the striped armchair in her mother’s parlor, having a hot flash. Or something. Something like a hot flash, not that she’d mention it to anybody in her family since they’re treating her so mean. Well, they’ll see! When the contractor comes to grade the hillside, then they’ll see. But Sybill sighs. She doesn’t really believe it any longer herself. She stares out the window, down the hill toward the town which lies flickering in a haze of heat and then she remembers, unbidden, playing hopscotch in summer, so many summers ago, and how the heat would rise that way, above the concrete in the schoolyard. She was not good at hopscotch, or any other games. She disliked them. And now she dislikes this game, too, the one they are assembled here to play, and can’t imagine what in the world her mother was thinking of, to leave such instructions in that envelope.

In these four days since the funeral, Sybill has come to think of Miss Elizabeth in two completely different ways: as the overly careful, sensitive, sweet mother of her childhood, leaning down to kiss her goodnight, smelling always of lilac—and also as that mythic figure in the streaming rain, with ax upraised. Actually this second mother is more like an oil painting done in thick brilliant strokes by some crazy foreign artist, and doesn’t have a thing to do with the first one. It just pops up from time to time. The space between these images is filled with hot flashes, with upset stomachs, chronic now, with sudden heavy poundings of the heart, with palpable doubt that rises to Sybill’s tongue and tastes metallic, the way it used to taste when you licked a scab.

Ugh! These horrible things from childhood keep coming to mind now, she can’t stop them—but worst of all are the dreams, which Sybill can’t control at all, obviously, and which often feature Mr. Edward Bing in a variety of postures she’d never consider in real life. Nor would he, she’s sure! These sexy, seedy dreams leave Sybill exhausted. Sometimes she wakes up weeping in her room at the Holiday Inn, and can’t even remember who she is, Ms. Sybill Hess the head of Language Arts at the Roanoke Technical Institute, manager of The Oaks, and not some lowdown hussy running from the law, some woman who lives in motels and washes out her underwear in countless bathroom sinks. She longs for her true self, her own life. She longs to watch Dialing for Dollars with Betty again, and to fill out the little condominium order forms calling for more gravel, or woodwork repair. She’d rather, on balance, have headaches. The pursuit of truth is worse than headaches in the long run, being more painful, and bringing its bearer no sympathy whatsoever, none. Period!

You’d think they’d feel sorry for her, and appreciate what she’s had to go through, but oh no. “I’m all for leaving the skeletons in the closet—” Myrtle actually said that.

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