The Evolution of Man by Skye Warren

Author:Skye Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance
Publisher: Skye Warren
Published: 2018-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

I burn my hand pulling a tray out of the oven. Metal heated to four hundred degrees burned right through the cute dish towel I found at a boutique that says, My safeword is takeout.

“Shit!” I suck on my thumb with a plaintive sound.

Avery gives me a completely unsympathetic snort. “I’ll do it.”

She uses an oven mitt—a plain, utilitarian blue oven mitt that seems to protect her just fine, because she manages to put the tray on the stove without almost dropping it.

“I bow to your greatness, Martha Stewart,” I say, handing her a serving spoon.

We spent the afternoon carving pumpkins. Avery made a traditional jack-o-lantern face. I applied my Smith College art school education to sculpting a penis out of a large orange fruit. And then we cleaned off the seeds, added plenty of butter and salt, and roasted them to perfection. My mouth is watering just looking at them, all browned and glistening.

When we’ve got the pumpkin seeds in a bowl, we join my mother on the sofa, where she’s got the TV queued up to the title screen of An Affair to Remember. “Ready, girls?”

“I’ve never seen this one,” Avery says.

“That’s blasphemy,” my mother says. “This is the most romantic movie.”

I go for a cluster of pumpkin seeds and pop it into my mouth. It burns my tongue. Then the salt and flavor hit me all at once. Orgasmic. “I’ve seen this a million times. And sometimes she’ll replay the scene at the end, the one where he sees her in the theater.”

Mom’s eyes get all dreamy. “And then he goes to her apartment.”

“‘I was looking up,’” I say in my best Deborah Kerr impression. Avery gives me a bemused smile. “You’ll understand in about two hours. And you’ll never look at the Empire State Building the same way. In fact it’s almost like the movie is a statement on the dangers of corporate excess.”

“Oh hush,” Mom says, pressing play. “It’s pure romance.”

The three of us gorge ourselves on butter-coated pumpkin seeds, licking our fingers to get all the salt. Cary Grant and Deborah fall in love on their cruise, even though they’re engaged to other people. Pure romance, my mother said. And it’s true. This is one of the most romantic movies ever made, except for the woman Cary Grant’s character didn’t marry. The man Deborah’s character didn’t marry. Strange, how love makes everything understandable. Even if it breaks someone else’s heart.

We reach the middle of the movie when I realize my mother’s fallen asleep, her head tilted to the side, the blueish veins visible in her eyelids. A knot in my throat, I pull up a blanket around her waist.

“Should I stop the movie?” Avery whispers.

I shake my head, but it’s not really an answer. Part of me wants to shake her, to demand she stay awake long enough to watch her favorite few minutes of her favorite movie. She’s been sleeping more and more, sleeping in late, taking naps.

The nurse told me it would happen.

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