Out of the Blue by Mandel Sally

Author:Mandel, Sally [Mandel, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: FICTION/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

In the taxi, I had this bleak sensation of freedom. I wondered if prisoners facing execution felt something similar: The decision has been made, it’s all out of your hands and absolutely nothing matters anymore. I went straight to my room when I got home, and the next morning Ma gave me one of those looks that she shoots the VCR when it misbehaves, as in: something’s wrong with you and you’d damn well better tell me what it is or I’ll make you wish you had. She tends to get physical with the VCR, and I half wondered if she was going to give me a swift kick. I ignored her, and my muffin, and sipped coffee in silence.

“Can I tell you something, Anna?” she said.

“No,” I answered, realizing it was fruitless.

“You’ve been acting weird ever since you saw your father.”

“How so?”

“Not talking enough.”

“Or thinking more,” I said. Maybe that would be the end of it.

“All men are not assholes, you know.”

“I fail to follow,” I said. “And please, don’t elucidate. It’s too early in the morning.”

“Everything all right with you and Joe?”

“Depends on what you mean by all right,” I said.

“Don’t be coy.” She slid the muffin a couple of inches closer to me.

“I’m just not ready to talk about it.” One of Ma’s more surprising qualities is that despite her bulldozer style, she can be exquisitely sensitive. She’s like those ballet dancers, the hippopotamuses in Fantasia. All that hulking power poised delicately on one toe. She backed off instantly, and I knew she would not say a word about it again unless I raised the issue myself.

“You never told me what you and Duncan Reese talked about yesterday,” I said.

“What do you mean?” I took minor satisfaction in so easily diverting her from my state of mind.

“I saw him go into the bakery,” I said.

I don’t know what I expected, but not what I saw on her face, the sadness.

“He’s firing me, isn’t he?” A justifiable conclusion, given her expression.

“I don’t think so,” Ma said. She got up, went to the sink and began washing dishes much too thoroughly before dropping them into the dishwasher. “He didn’t say.”

“Then what was he doing in your store?”

“He told me that you’d fallen on the street and that you were all right, that I shouldn’t worry.”

I couldn’t read her voice, the one thing I felt I could always count on.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” But the fact was, I barely cared.

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