Luka Meer: Four Short Stories by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodgkin and Blount
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

4

The next day, I went to my mom’s. She still lives in the house where I grew up, a brick bungalow with a camel-hump addition of vinyl clapboard. The grass is a little shaggier than it used to be, and in the spring and summer, the flowerbeds are mostly weeds. The foundation has a crack, and the basement takes on water when it rains, and some of the windows don’t open now because of how the house has settled. But the front porch is wide and deep and cool, and I replaced the deck last summer, and most importantly, the inside is the same. Mom forgets things, and she does better in places she knows. She keeps photos on the wall of me and Mina. I taped more recent ones to the fridge because, believe it or not, kids grow up.

I did the dishes in the sink. I recycled the papers on the porch. Picking up is half the job—the tea bags left forgotten on the counter, the blanket she carried in from the living room and let fall on the floor, plates abandoned on the coffee table. It was Thanksgiving, but I did chicken instead of turkey—butter under the skin, herbs and garlic and a cut lemon wedged inside. Even after I washed my hands, I smelled lemon. Later, I’d do green beans in the skillet, and I had a box of Stove Top ready to go. Mom hadn’t ever liked to cook, not as long as I knew her, and she said she was fine with toast and cereal, and I always checked that the milk was fresh. But she needed more than Special K, so most weeks, I did my cleaning and prepped a meal or two, even if it wasn’t Thanksgiving.

It took longer, in case you’re wondering, when it felt like I had electricity running from my neck up to a light bulb behind my eye.

I was bringing up toilet paper from the basement—if I don’t, Mom will do it, and I don’t like her risking the stairs—and when I stepped into the kitchen, Mina was there. The leather jacket. The flannel. Fingerless gloves. Tights worn with what she called her ass-dusting boots. We have the same eyes; you can see it in the pictures. After a minute, I stepped around her and finished stocking the bathroom with TP.

When I came back, she was still standing there. She flexed her fingers like they were cold, and then she said, “Rex is in the hospital.”

I wrapped my hands around the back of a chair.

“They broke his knees.” Her voice broke. “They say Rex isn’t ever going to walk again, not like before.”

The tablecloth was old. It was thick vinyl, covered with a muted, brown-toned print of assorted fruits. Bananas. Apples. Cherries.

“Say something!”

I looked her in the eye. “Did you know?”

I hadn’t meant to ask; I’d learned a long time ago not to ask Mina anything because I didn’t want to know. But—and you’ll find this hard to believe—every once in a while, I fuck up.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.