What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam

Author:Steven Amsterdam [Amsterdam, Steven]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781594486395
Amazon: 1594486395
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Published: 2013-03-21T07:00:00+00:00

The pawnshop wasn’t going to open for half an hour. There was a café with a direct view where she could warm up while she waited. When its door, stuck with winter wetness, opened, she fell into the middle of the room. A dozen patrons twitched in her direction before returning to their friends and newspapers and coffees.

I’ve got three tickets and we’re going! . . . They can wait for their water . . . I’m hanging out five more minutes and then leaving without a note . . .

Trying not to hear any casual disdain floating in the air, Ruth scanned past the counter to the kitchen. Cooking had been the thing that nearly kept Alek on a straight path. He’d said it was mindful, constant, and productive and would always be his fallback. She looked for his face behind the counter but didn’t see it.

She set herself up at a small table next to the window like a regular woman of leisure. Her eyelids felt papery from being open so long. Each blink made a click. Still, he might pass by.

The words around her drifted in.

Friendly or not-so-friendly . . . The thing to remember is that she doesn’t mean it . . . I really don’t need a second coffee . . .

If there were a cure for this, it would have to be sleep. When the waiter approached, his mind a race of table statuses, Ruth asked for a large latte, as if that was a good idea. For her main course, a raspberry and white chocolate muffin with a few mitigating grains and seeds. Alek would walk by the window, see her sitting there, come in, make fun of her order, and all would be right.

They don’t care if I pay with change . . .

Don’t listen. Don’t distinguish the words. Think of a clear field of color, a favorite shade of orange, an enveloping afternoon sun—the orange disk floating above the manic town in the painting inside Alek’s backpack. He must still be close. Or was he on a bus already to parts unknown? No. He would come back to her, with the painting or without it, but in his heart he must want the connection. There was no managing her thoughts anymore.

Don’t scratch, leave it alone. The cream will fix it . . .

And this wasn’t the place to empty her mind.

Whenever he returned from one of his blank patches with unlikely details, she tried to accept his words as having their own kind of truth. She didn’t fully believe what he reported, but maybe he had drawn himself into another dimension for a week or a month. How else would he have returned from his internal neverland in one piece? She once put this forward to Natalie, who tightened a smile and said, “Maybe you’d like to try some antipsychotics too?”

Ruth suddenly saw herself, sitting alone in a café window, trying to chase away voices.

She canceled her order and left, taking the straightest route home.

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