Still Life with Plums by Marie Manilla

Author:Marie Manilla
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-933202-61-7
Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Published: 2010-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

That afternoon Natalie lopes across the gravel road to her bungalow and closes the rubber-backed curtains to seal out the stark light. She digs her cell phone from her purse and punches in the digits that will connect her to home.

James picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Hey,” she says, conjuring exuberance to masquerade her guilt. “How’s it going?”

“Great. It’s going great,” he says. Natalie wonders if he’s conjuring his own exuberance.

“How’s Mom?”

“Listen for yourself,” James says, holding the phone toward Natalie’s mother who chatters frantically in the distance.

“God,” Natalie says, guilt doubled. “Why don’t you slip a Xanax in her Jell-O.”

“It’s fine,” James says.

“Times like these I wish I had a sibling to pawn her off on,” Natalie says, because she, too, was sadly and surprisingly an only child.

“Honestly, it’s fine,” James says. “Mixed in with all the gibberish are some interesting stories.”

“Really?” Natalie says, unexpectedly relieved since she thought she might have stoppered her mother up for good during their last conversation when Natalie was preparing for this trip: scribbling down important phone numbers, arranging for the day nurse, searching for the Dramamine, lining up her mother’s pills, trying to dig her good shoes from the high shelf in the closet with her mother droning on and on like a swarm of wasps until Natalie’s temples throbbed and she finally and uncharacteristically seethed: Shut up, woman! Shut up, shut up, shut up! Which her mother did, leaving Natalie to skulk away in shame. Apparently her mother has more fortitude than she did thirty years ago, a realization that makes Natalie proud.

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