A Hawk in the Woods by Carrie Laben

Author:Carrie Laben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Word Horde
Published: 2019-03-20T02:27:19+00:00

After a little while—it felt like a month, maybe, but who could say—it turned out that Grandfather’s third death was going to occasion some paperwork after all. Mom had brazened and pushed her way through the lack of a death certificate, sure, but the old bastard (that’s what Abby heard Mom call him once, just after hanging up the telephone, but at this point it didn’t surprise her or even make her giggle anymore) had had a legal last will and testament on file with his attorney and it left all of his money and property to Martha in an elaborate trust that Mom couldn’t touch. Even though in the end an attorney that Grandfather could push and bluff was an attorney that Mom could push and bluff too, Martha had to sign some papers which meant that she and Abby both had to sit in a dark office where the carpet smelled vaguely smokey and the walls were lined with books that had cloth bindings and gold stamped titles—not as fun as a V. C. Andrews paperback but not really important like Grandfather’s books either.

It was all horribly dull and took forever, so while they sat Abby watched Mom work on the lawyer. Mom wasn’t better than Grandfather in the sense that she was stronger when she pushed, though she was just about as strong. She was better because instead of yelling and huffing like Grandfather did she smiled and flattered while she pushed. This seemed to make the lawyer’s brain softer, and sometimes she barely had to poke him at all brain-wise.

Abby wondered why Grandfather had never done that and then she tried to imagine him complimenting this red-faced bald man—complimenting anyone really, or laughing at any joke he hadn’t made himself—and then she did giggle, but mostly on the inside.

Once it was over, Abby expected Mom to quit the Erie County Home job but she didn’t. She took as many hours as she could and sometimes was at the Home, wasn’t back at their home, until after the girls’ bedtime. When she was gone Abby still kept the curtains closed and the mirrors covered—it made her more comfortable—but she uncovered them when Mom got home, because Mom insisted they didn’t need to do that, there was nothing left to be afraid of.

“Maybe she really meant it, about not being too good to work,” Martha said when Abby mentioned it as they boiled pasta together on a school night around eight. Between them they hadn’t quite figured out how to stop between crunchy and mushy yet, but they were getting closer.

“No way,” Abby said. “If it was about that she could do something more interesting, cooler.” She wasn’t sure what but she was sure there must be cooler things than a job that meant you smelled like mothballs and piss when you came home. People were on TV, they went to offices, they wore suits and bright-red dresses.

For that matter, just working hard didn’t make anyone different from Grandfather.

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