The Secret Life of Roberta Greaves by Ann Birch

Author:Ann Birch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inanna Publications
Published: 2016-08-14T04:00:00+00:00

20.

SEVERAL GUESTS HAVE ASSEMBLED In Roberta’s living room. She is so glad that Carl has accepted her invitation to Christmas dinner. Now, if only Daddy were here to join in the festivities. But instead of Daddy, there is Neville, her mother’s new beau. He is tall and emaciated and has a white beard that could do with a pruning. With him is his Rottweiler, a large, fat animal, fierce-looking but friendly.

“Polonius by name,” Neville says. “After Shakespeare’s old windbag. You’ll see what I mean, heh heh.” Yeah, for sure, Roberta says to herself as she pushes up the living-room window in an attempt to air out the dog’s farts.

Carl has come with his father. The old man has picked up a copy of The New Yorker from the coffee table, leaving Carl to make tentative conversation with Roberta’s mother and Neville.

“You’re an actor, Roberta tells me.”

“Was. Mostly retired now. My biggest role latterly was Claudius two summers ago at Stratford. If I’d been thirty years younger, I might have done Hamlet. Know all the lines, could have walked right into the part.” He launches into the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, and Roberta retreats to the kitchen.

“Something wrong, Mom?” Charlie says. He is pouring red wine into the gravy to glaze it, or maybe deglaze it, Roberta can never remember which.

“‘The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns….’ I’m just not ready for that right now.” She grabs the kitchen counter, takes a deep breath, and tries not to cry.

“We’ll get through this, Mom, somehow. Consider that Neville doesn’t know he’s being a pain in the ass, and Granny can’t tell him in front of everyone.”

Ed is taking the prosecco from the fridge. “Let me get this into him,” he says, “and maybe it’ll shut him up. Things go better when everyone is slightly pissed.” He pours the wine into champagne glasses, sets one aside for her, and takes the others on a silver tray into the living room.

“Told Granny about the novel?” Charlie asks.

“No, I’m going to wait. No sense spoiling this day any more than it’s already been spoiled. I’ll make a trip to Summerton in the new year and break the news.”

Roberta and Charlie can hear Neville going on now about the pain in his right shoulder. “I’ve been having hot baths to ease the agony,” he says. “And then someone told me that a cold pack works better. The other night, I couldn’t sleep, so up I got and looked in the freezer for ice cubes, a package of frozen peas, or what have you. Nothing in the freezer but a Cornish hen.”

“Gotta hear this one,” Charlie says, setting down his wooden spoon and moving closer to the archway into the living room.

“So I took the Cornish hen into bed with me, and it really worked….”

“Wonder what that means?” Charlie whispers.

“And the next day, I ate it.”

“Poor thing,” they hear Carl say.

“Oh gross,” Charlie says, snorting into his hand to keep down his laughter.

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