Letting Go of Gravity by Meg Leder

Author:Meg Leder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse

Twenty-Nine

MAYBE IT’S THE FACT that the meager air-conditioning at Carla’s is no match for the day’s humidity, especially with the kiln blazing in the basement. Or maybe it’s an effect of their ride over with the new bus driver, who all the ladies think drives too fast. Whatever the reason, when the Wild Meadows crew arrives the next afternoon, Carla lasts about thirty seconds before shooting me a sympathetic look and fleeing back downstairs.

The ladies are in a mood.

I can see the warning signs immediately, like prickly little flashes of heat lightning: Miss Peggy’s extra-straight posture, Lorna’s anxious hair patting, Harriet’s misapplied makeup, Alice’s inability to make eye contact with anyone or anything other than the floor.

“Hey, everyone!” I say.

“These paintbrushes are dirty,” Miss Peggy says as she sits down, holding up a handful.

“We had a kids’ birthday party in here this morning,” I say, taking them from her and heading to the sink. “I probably didn’t clean this bunch yet.”

“You could have cleaned them yourself, Pegs,” Harriet points out, and I smile since I couldn’t say it myself. But my appreciation for Harriet is short-lived. “Ugh, are we just painting boring old mugs again? I don’t need any more mugs. I have mugs coming out of my ears and mouth and—”

I interrupt before she can name any other body parts. “There are also bowls and plates,” I offer. “And some cat and dog figurines?”

“We’ve painted all those already,” Lorna says. Today she’s decked out in purples—lilacs, lavenders, grapes—with a small delicate violet brooch. “Before you got here. But that’s okay. There’re always new ways to paint old dogs!” She chuckles appreciatively at her joke and grabs one of the dog figurines. “Get it? New ways? Old dogs?”

I smile weakly, but Harriet rolls her eyes and even Miss Peggy seems offended by how bad the joke is. Lorna immediately deflates.

“Boring,” Harriet mumbles, tapping her fingers on the table, and I wonder if she’s always been this rude, or if she’s just letting it all out now that she’s older and no one’s stopping her. “Dying of boredom here.”

“We should only be so lucky,” Miss Peggy declares, snatching the newly cleaned brushes out of my hands.

God, these two are being awful. I suck in my breath, choosing to ignore them, and sit next to Alice instead.

“How about we work on this one?” I ask her, holding up a smiling ceramic flower and grabbing some bright-yellow paint. She looks harder at the floor, but I pick up the brush and start painting the petals anyway.

After ten minutes, the atmosphere in the room has gotten worse. Sure, Lorna is painting, carefully biting her lip as she coats her dog statue in an electric-blue color, but Alice seems to be getting smaller and more withdrawn by the second, actively shrinking from me each time I show her the smiling flower. Harriet has fallen asleep and is loudly snoring. Miss Peggy still hasn’t settled on a paintbrush, drying each one by hand and then holding it up to the light, insisting, “It’s very hard to work with substandard equipment.

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