Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon

Author:Pamela Ribon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2003-08-22T04:00:00+00:00

000040.

I didn’t know just how solitary my family could be until that first day home without Dad. We walked in the house and tossed our luggage in different corners of the living room. All four of us stared at each other, standing in silence. Only Shannon was still crying. We stood in this living room that none of us grew up in. We’d spent only a few holidays there, and it was rare for us to be in that room at the same time. I didn’t remember the room being so big before, so full of furniture I didn’t remember. It looked like someone else’s house. Only Dad’s recliner, all hunched and worn in the corner, felt familiar.

Mom spoke first. “I want to be alone. Are you girls going to be okay?” Her voice was different, mechanical. She looked past us toward the stairs.

We nodded, and Mom went up to her bedroom. Every once in a while we could hear her sobs and the sound of moving upstairs.

Meredith went straight to sandwich making. Mere ate all the time, so it wasn’t inappropriate for her to pull out some turkey and cheese and ask if we wanted anything.

“I want soup,” Shannon said. She was mostly speaking to the pantry, which contained no soup at all.

“How’s school, Shan?” Meredith asked as she cut the crusts off her sandwich.

Shannon was a junior at Rice University in Houston. All three of us spent our high school years in Texas, but only Meredith moved up north a year after my parents did. Mere was always close to my father and openly Dad’s favorite, but none of us minded.

“School’s school,” Shannon said, as she opened the cabinet where Mom kept the junk food. “Pringles? When did Mom and Dad start liking Pringles?” She opened the can and sat at the kitchen table.

“Who’s going to cut the turkey?” Meredith whispered. Shannon and I looked at her.

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“Can we not right now, Mere? Huh?” Shannon put the lid back on the can of chips and stood up.

“We should probably go to bed,” Meredith mumbled.

“It’s daylight,” Shannon said. It was close to ten in the morning. I could still hear my mother weeping upstairs. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep ever again. What would a nightmare feel like in the middle of all this sadness?

“I’m not tired,” I said.

“Me either,” said Shannon.

Meredith got up and hugged Shannon. “Well, I’m going to go to sleep. I’m exhausted. I was at the hospital much longer than you guys were.”

She walked out of the kitchen. Once we had heard her close the upstairs bathroom door, Shannon whirled toward me, whispering feverishly.

“She’s such a bitch. Like she worked harder or had a sadder day because she was there longer? We’re bad daughters because we couldn’t fly in any sooner? Because we’re not psychic and didn’t come home yesterday?”

“Just ignore it, Shannon.”

“I hate her so much. She’s so self-righteous. With her perfect job and her perfect little friends and her perfect little apartment.

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