This Is My Daughter by Roxana Robinson

Author:Roxana Robinson [Robinson Roxana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2016-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

17

On Friday, at five o’clock, the girls were not waiting for Emma down in the lobby. They were upstairs in Amanda’s room. This still had the blue-and-white-checked curtains and bedskirts that Amanda had had as a child, in the old apartment, when Maeve and her father still lived with them. They had been in the new apartment for five years, but the curtains still drooped below the windowsills. Caroline had stopped saying she was going to have them taken up.

It seemed that there was plenty of money for some things and none at all for others. In the summer, Caroline and Amanda flew to Louisville to visit her parents, and sometimes to a ranch in Wyoming with Caroline’s brother and his family. At Christmas they flew down to Barbados, where Caroline’s parents rented a house every year. There was money for these trips, which were expensive, and there was money for expensive clothes. But it seemed that there was no money for things like Amanda’s curtains. Amanda would not bring it up, because asking for anything that cost money made trouble. Caroline gave Amanda pocket money whenever she asked, but if Amanda asked for an allowance, or for money to be spent on something larger, then Caroline’s mouth grew tight.

“Your father should really be paying for this,” she would say, and the way she said the words made them sound poisonous. Amanda hated hearing her saying those words in that way. She didn’t want to hear Caroline talk about her father at all, she didn’t want to think about her father. Hearing Caroline refer to him in that voice made Amanda feel as though she were being whipped. She didn’t want to think about her father, or hear his name spoken, or see him, if she could help it.

Amanda didn’t care about her curtains being too long. She didn’t care what her room looked like. It was always messy. Three days a week Maria made Amanda’s bed and picked up her clothes. The other days the room stayed untouched. Amanda liked having the bed made for her, but she wanted the clothes left where they were. She liked knowing where everything was, finding her clothes just as she had left them. She hated order, disorder seemed safer. Caroline rarely said anything about Amanda’s untidiness—she seldom made her own bed. But sometimes, for no reason, Caroline came into Amanda’s room and flew into a rage. She stood with her hands on her hips and shouted at Amanda, and then Amanda had to pick up everything, every single thing that was visible. What Amanda did was throw all her shoes into the closet, and then stuff everything else into the laundry hamper, everything: clothes, belts, comic books, tapes, magazines.

At five o’clock, when Emma arrived, Amanda and Courtney were sitting on Amanda’s bed. They were wearing their school uniforms. Their book bags and jackets lay on the floor, and their shoes were scattered on the needlepoint rug. They each had a can of Coke, and a box of Oreos stood on the bedside table.

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