Days by Mary Robison

Author:Mary Robison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092051
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2018-12-25T05:00:00+00:00

MY MOTHER HAD MADE A wrong turn and we were on Buttles Avenue. “Go there,” I said, pointing down a street beside Garfield Park. We passed a group of paper boys who were riding bikes with saddlebags. They were going slow, because of the ice.

“Are you very discouraged, Will?” my mother said. “Belle tells me you’re having a run of bad luck.”

“You could say so,” Will said. “A little rough water.”

“I’m sorry,” Mother said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Will said, “Well, this will be oversimplifying, but essentially what I do is take a weed and evaluate its structure and growth and habitat, and so forth.”

“What’s wrong with that?” my mother said.

“Nothing. But it isn’t enough.”

“I get it,” my mother said uncertainly.

I had taken a mirror and a comb from my handbag and I was trying for a clean center-part in my hair. I was thinking about finishing my bill paying.

Will said, “What do you want to do after I check in, Belle? What about breakfast?”

“I’ve got to go home for a while and clean up that tax jazz, or I’ll never rest,” I said. “I’ll just show up at your motel later. If we ever find it.”

“That’ll be fine,” Will said.

Mother said, “I’d offer to serve you two dinner tonight, but I think you’ll want to leave me out of it. I know how your father and I felt after he went away sometimes. Which way do I turn here?”

We had stopped at an intersection near the iron gates of the park. Behind the gates there was a frozen pond, where a single early-morning skater was skating backward, expertly crossing his blades.

I couldn’t drive a car but, like my father, I have always enjoyed maps and atlases. During automobile trips, I liked comparing distances on maps. I liked the words latitude, cartography, meridian. It was extremely annoying to me that Mother had gotten us turned around and lost in our own city, and I was angry with Will all of a sudden, for wasting seven years on something superficial.

“What about up that way?” Will said to my mother, pointing to the left. “There’s some traffic up by that light, at least.”

I leaned forward in my seat and started combing my hair all over again.

“There’s no hurry,” my mother said.

“How do you mean?” I asked her.

“To get William to the motel,” she said. “I know everybody complains, but I think an ice storm is a beautiful thing. Let’s enjoy it.”

She waved her cigarette at the windshield. The sun had burned through and was gleaming in the branches of all the maples and buckeye trees in the park. “It’s twinkling like a stage set,” Mother said.

“It is pretty,” I said.

Will said, “It’ll make a bad-looking spring. A lot of shrubs get damaged and turn brown, and the trees don’t blossom right.”

For once I agreed with my mother. Everything was quiet and holding still. Everything was in place, the way it was supposed to be. I put my comb away and smiled back at Will—because I knew it was for the last time.

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