Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Author:Jessica Anya Blau [Blau, Jessica Anya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780063052314
Google: PH72DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Custom House
Published: 2021-05-10T23:00:00+00:00

Sheba and Jimmy snuck out before the service ended. As I walked home with my parents, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way they had looked at me while I sang: as if I mattered, as if I were seen. My father wasn’t talking, as usual, but I didn’t feel the weight of his silence. My mother was talking, as usual, but I could barely hear her palaver.

Mom was making a pork roast for dinner that night. I paid close attention so I could make it for the Cones on Monday. I wondered if they had a meat thermometer; I couldn’t recall seeing one during my many organizing and cleaning sprees.

After I set the table, I stood alone in the dining room and looked at President Ford on the wall. The words sex addict knocked around my head, like my brain wanted to put the worst thing I could think of in front of the face of our president.

“Mary Jane!” my mother called.

I went to the kitchen and put on the yellow quilted oven mitts I’d gotten for Christmas last year. Together, my mother and I placed all the food on the table: pork roast, mashed potatoes, buttered peas and carrots, Bisquick rolls and butter.

My mother sat and put her napkin in her lap. I sat and put my napkin in my lap. We both looked in the direction of the living room, where my father was in his chair, reading the Sunday paper.

“I don’t know why they sing songs from that Jesus Christ Superstar.” My mother was referring to the third song we’d sung, “Hosanna.” She didn’t like Jesus Christ Superstar, though she’d never seen it. I hadn’t seen it either, but we had the record from the Show Tunes of the Month Club. When I played it, I had to turn the volume real low.

“I think if you heard the whole record, you’d like it.”

“Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar. What are people thinking? They don’t show respect for the church.”

I remembered Sheba’s and Jimmy’s faces one night when we sat in the car and sang Godspell songs. They both knew all the words to every song. Jimmy was so into it, he lifted his foot and stubbed out the joint into the tread of his sandal. And I could tell by the way Sheba shut her eyes at certain lines that she respected the church.

My father entered the room. He folded his newspaper in half, set it on the table beside his plate, and sat. As always, he surveyed the food before putting his hands in the prayer position. My mother and I put our hands in the prayer position too. I shut my eyes.

My father said, “Thank you, Jesus, for this food on our table and for my wonderful wife and obedient child. God bless this family, God bless our relatives in Idaho, God bless President Ford and his family, and God bless the United States of America.”

“And God bless everyone in the Cone household and may all their illnesses be”—I paused as I tried to come up with the best word—“eradicated.

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