The Summer List by Amy Mason Doan

Author:Amy Mason Doan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

23

Band-Aids

2016

Friday night

“Damn!” The knife clattered to the floor and the onion Casey’d been dicing rolled off the chopping board. She sucked on her finger.

“Is it bad?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. But guess you can tell I’m not exactly a gourmet cook. I was trying to show off.”

“I’ll get something.” I ran to her bathroom and rummaged in the medicine cabinet, returning with a Cars antibiotic Band-Aid and a box of gauze pads.

“Let me do it,” she said.

“I’m not squeamish anymore.” I forced her to uncurl her hand and show the half-inch line of red on the tip of her index finger, under a flap of skin. I would have been fine except for the skin flap. As I was blotting it with gauze I felt the old, infuriating rushing in my ears and had to sit on my bar stool with my head down.

“You okay?” Casey laughed, snatched the Band-Aid from the counter, and wrapped her finger.

I handed over the wet wad of gauze without looking at it. “God, I hate being a 1950s cliché. A woman woozy at the sight of blood.” I smiled. “Guess I was showing off, too. Trying to prove I’d grown out of it.”

Casey returned to chopping the onion. “Now, that—” she paused, pointed the knife at me “—would be utterly disappointing and boring.” She turned to check the pot of pasta water.

Another small step forward.

She slid the pile of glistening, pale yellow onion off the chopping board and into the pan of olive oil. It sizzled and spat, a drop landing on my arm. Casey had the pan on too high. But I wasn’t about to tell her. I was celebrating inside. Sally Field in that old Oscars speech. You like me, you really like me!

“That smells so good,” I said. “Please let me help.” I hopped off my bar stool.

“No, you’re the guest. Sit.”

And just like that, another giant step back. I was still a Guest with a capital G. I climbed back onto my stool and sipped my red wine.

Casey stirred the onions. Their edges were browning too fast. “You can entertain me, though. Read me something.”

Forward progress again. Or was she only humoring me? I couldn’t keep up, her mood changed so often.

I dug through the bag of books she’d given me. This wasn’t an e.e. cummings moment. I needed something campy and juicy, to make her remember how we used to be. Valley of the Dolls seemed to be the ticket. I flipped through for a scene Casey and I had mocked many times: the one where a grown woman reassures her mother that she’s doing her bust exercises.

I worked hard, reading the lines aloud in my most earnest voice, as if the bust exercises were life-and-death. Sally Field had never reached so deep.

I worked too hard, of course. Because though Casey smiled throughout my reading, bustling around the kitchen stirring tomato sauce and draining pasta, she didn’t reward me with the helpless snorts and tears of laughter I was after.

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