When She Came Home by Drusilla Campbell

Author:Drusilla Campbell [Campbell, Drusilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Family Life, Fiction / Contemporary Women, Fiction / War & Military, General Fiction
ISBN: 1455510351
Publisher: Grand Central
Published: 2013-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Late on Sunday morning Frankie stood in the mini-kitchen in the great room preparing food for the game day party. She had turned down breakfast and been sipping soda water for her upset stomach since she got up. Four Tylenol hadn’t done a thing to her headache. She should have known better, should have heeded her instinct to turn down the Johnnie Walker. Her head hurt, and her stomach, and whatever interior gravity kept her organs in their right positions had stopped working. Only her skin held her intact this morning.

The vegetables bought at Whole Foods lay on the counter. Though fresh enough, they smelled faintly putrid to her. Crudités and dips had seemed like a good idea before she was actually faced with having to peel and cut things up. In the market everything had been irresistible as she pushed the cart around pyramids of apples and oranges, boxes of blackberries that only days before had ornamented mountainous bushes in the Northwest, cucumber and zucchini torpedoes, tomatoes as red as fast cars. The experience had been kaleidoscopic and pleasantly dizzying. The colors alone made her want to buy and buy. Now she stared at two glossy Japanese eggplants before her and tried to remember what she’d meant to do with them.

Across the room Glory sat on the floor with Barbie and her friends arranged around her, holding the new/used bear from the clinic toy box in her arms, Zee-Zee in attendance as always, observing everything with his hooded eyes. Flame had positioned herself, frog legs, her front paws and muzzle resting on the edge of the rug that defined the play area. Glory spoke seriously to the dog and dolls; sometimes the bear seemed to be talking back. Occasionally Flame thumped her feathered tail to show that she was doing her part. Every now and then Frankie heard a few words, enough to know that the topic was, not surprisingly, the events of the day before.

In the midst of solitary play Glory bore little resemblance to the precocious child she sometimes was in conversation with adults. She might have been an overgrown five- or six-year-old lost in make-believe. Thank goodness she had weathered the events of the day before without consequence, but Frankie couldn’t say the same for herself. Added to the hangover she had earned the night before, something wormed under her skin, a feeling familiar as the apprehension she had felt as a student, waiting for a grade on an essay or theme on which she feared she hadn’t worked hard enough.

For almost an hour Rick had been sweating out his hangover on the treadmill in the workout center that occupied another area of the great room. They’d spoken only a few words that morning. Variations on never again.

Stepping off the treadmill he came across the great room, shiny with sweat, smelling slightly sour. As he wiped himself with a towel he looked at the vegetables arranged on the countertop and started to laugh. Teasing he counted the cucumbers.

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