Repairing the World by Linda Epstein

Author:Linda Epstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin
Published: 2022-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Right at Home

They returned books to the library. They bought stamps at the post office and picked up milk, bread, and eggs from the grocery store. Aunt Toby took Daisy out to lunch. She had pizza, and Aunt Toby had salad. Then they dropped off the dry cleaning and went to the local farm store to buy some squash and onions. When they got home, Daisy ran through the front door, not waiting for Aunt Toby. She stopped in the foyer a moment, just listening. She could hear them walking around upstairs. She ran up but stopped when she got to the top step, her hand clutching the wooden rail tightly.

The three of them—Mom, Dad, and the midwife—were at the far end of the hall, in a small huddle at the doorway of the bedroom. The midwife was holding Mom on one side, and Dad was holding her on the other, their hands under Mom’s arms. The three grown-ups took a couple of steps into the hallway, not noticing Daisy standing at the top of the stairs. Mom was humming, her head thrown back, and her long, curly hair a mess, like she hadn’t bothered to comb it after the crazy singing shower that morning. Although she had a purple terry-cloth bathrobe sort of thrown over her shoulders, she was basically standing in the hall naked.

It wasn’t like Daisy hadn’t seen Mom naked before. They weren’t very private about that kind of stuff. Dad walked around in his boxers all the time, and it was normal for Daisy and Mom to change in front of each other, or for Daisy to make a naked dash from the bathroom to her bedroom. Bodies weren’t a big deal in their house. But Daisy had never seen Mom full-out naked while she was a million months pregnant.

And usually when Daisy looked at her mom, she just saw… Mom cooking dinner for her and her dad. Mom asking her about her homework. Mom writing, or reading, or working, or not paying attention to Daisy at all. Or Mom and Dad leaving her with a babysitter to go out to dinner or a movie. When she looked at Mom, or Dad for that matter, she pretty much only saw them in relation to herself. She’d never really thought about who they were as people other than her parents.

But looking down the hallway at Mom standing there, held up by the midwife and Dad, for a brief flicker of a moment, Daisy saw her mom as a woman, Lori, doing something that very much had nothing at all to do with her. It made Daisy feel untethered. She gripped the railing tighter. Her vision went a little dark around the edges.

Dad and the midwife were totally focused on Mom. And Mom was looking through everything and everyone. She was there but not there. Still, none of them had noticed Daisy standing at the top of the stairs. They took two steps down the hallway. And Daisy couldn’t look away.

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