Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Mccracken Elizabeth

Author:Mccracken, Elizabeth [Mccracken, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812995961
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

In earlier years, Sylvia had been a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other person. When disasters happened (her mother had taught her) you strode firmly in the opposite direction, because calamity followed catastrophe followed disaster. People who believed things couldn’t get worse were the ones who were killed, by man or nature. You had to get away.

But the Bicentennial summer, all she could think was, my fault. She could hardly move for culpability. That’s what happened when you were the oldest surviving member of your family. You could not cast blame any further back: it was yours, like your spinster aunt’s diploma. Everyone else refused it, and the only way to hand it down was to die.

She’d fed that boy, her son, too well. That’s what Rena said: she’d starved the girl and stuffed the boy. Last Thanksgiving Rena had come with her steno notebook full of all the ways that Sylvia had damaged her, as though at the end she might present her mother with a bill. Distrust of men: $9,000. Fear of living alone: $15,000. “I need to do this,” said Rena, and she flipped page after page and listed injury: how Sylvia and Ben had always taken Aaron more seriously; how in the family you had to be careful about hurting men’s feelings but women didn’t matter; how they hadn’t bought her a piano when that was all she really wanted. Aaron wanted a dog, he got a dog. Aaron wanted a car, he got a car.

“I don’t remember you ever asking!” Sylvia had said.

“You knew,” said Rena darkly. Then she added, “You never loved me unconditionally. There were always strings.”

“What are you talking about? Darling, I absolutely loved you. Love you.”

“You didn’t love me the way you loved Aaron.”

What could Sylvia say? That was true. Not more nor less but differently. If one could measure love—but even then love was too various, one love would have to be measured by degrees Fahrenheit and one by atomic weight. First born, second, boy, girl: of course different loves. To compare was nonsense. What Rena wanted: scales with packages of maternal love, finally squared—but then she’d complain about something else. You just gave me the same love you’d already given Aaron! You didn’t treat me like an individual!

A different love for grandchildren, too: unreserved. Gleeful. Greedy. Sylvia was allowed to rub Noxzema into Lisa’s sunburnt back after a day at the swimming pool. She let Lisa pick out expensive shampoo at the grocery store, something called Milk Plus that smelled like the 1930s baby soap she’d washed her children with. So what if Lisa’d fallen asleep with the bubble gum they got from the candy store, and it ended up in her hair and had to be cut out? They walked down to Sal’s salon, and now Lisa had her first real haircut from a professional. They cuddled on the orange guest bed and watched television and ate popcorn. Oh, if Rena ever found out how Sylvia loved the childish flub of her granddaughter,

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