When, at last, Harriet’s mother allowed herself to be taken by the hand and coaxed inside, Allison led her carefully to the couch, settled her down with a cushion behind her head, and turned on the television—its chatter a frank relief, the bouncy music, the unconcerned voices. She then trailed in and out bringing Kleenex, headache powders, cigarettes and an ashtray, a glass of iced tea and an ice pack their mother kept in the freezer—clear plastic, swimming-pool blue, shaped like a harlequin half-mask from Mardi Gras—which she wore over her eyes when her sinuses were bothering her or when she suffered what she called sick headaches.
Their mother accepted the Kleenex and the tea from the little heap of comforts, and, murmuring distractedly all the while, pressed the aquamarine ice pack to her forehead. “What must you think of me? … I’m so ashamed of myself.…” The ice mask did not escape Harriet, who sat studying her mother from the armchair opposite. She had several times seen her father, the morning after he’d been drinking, sitting stiffly at his desk with the blue ice mask tied onto his head as he made phone calls or flipped angrily through his papers. But there was no liquor on her mother’s breath. Pressed to her mother’s chest, out on the porch, she hadn’t smelled a thing. In fact, her mother
Allison reappeared in the doorway. She glanced over at their mother, quickly, to make sure she wasn’t looking, and then, silently, mouthed the words to Harriet:
Harriet blinked. Of course: how could she have forgotten? Usually it was the anniversary of his death, in May, that set their mother off: crying fits, inexplicable panics. A few years ago, it had been so bad that she had been unable to leave the house to attend Allison’s eighth-grade graduation. But this May, the date had come and gone without incident.
Allison cleared her throat. “Mama, I’m running you a bath,” she said. Her voice was strangely crisp and adult. “You don’t have to get in if you don’t want to.”
Harriet stood to go upstairs but her mother flung out an arm in a panicky, lightning-quick gesture, as if she were about to walk in front of a car.
“Girls! My two sweet girls!” She patted the sofa on either side, and though her face was swollen from crying, in her voice was a will o’ the wisp—faint, but bright—of the sorority girl in the hall portrait.
“Harriet, why in the world didn’t you speak up?” she said. “Did you have a good time with Tatty? What did you talk about?”
Once again, Harriet found herself struck dumb in the unwelcome glare of her mother’s attention. For some reason, all she could think of was a carnival ride she had been on when she was small, with a ghost sailing placidly back and forth along a length of fishing line in the dark, and how—unexpectedly—the ghost had jumped its track and shot right in her face. Every now and then, she still woke bolt-upright from a sound sleep when the white shape flew at her out of the dark.
“What did you do at Tatty’s house?”
“Played chess.” In the silence that followed, Harriet tried to think of some funny or entertaining observation to tack on to this reply.
Her mother put an arm around Allison, to make her feel included, too. “And why didn’t you go, honey? Have you had your supper yet?”
“And now we present the ABC Movie of the Week,” said the television. “
During the opening credits of the movie, Harriet stood and started up to her room, only to have her mother follow her up the stairs.
“Do you hate Mother for acting so crazy?” she asked, standing forlornly in the open door of Harriet’s room. “Why don’t you come watch the movie with us? Just the three of us?”
“No, thank you,” said Harriet politely. Her mother was staring down at the rug—alarmingly close, Harriet realized, to the tar-stained spot. Part of the stain was visible near the edge of the bed.
“I …” A string in her mother’s throat seemed to pop; helplessly, her glance darted over Allison’s stuffed animals, the pile of books on the window seat by Harriet’s bed. “You must hate me,” she said, in a rusty voice.
Harriet looked at the floor. She couldn’t stand it when her mother was melodramatic like this. “No, Mama,” she said. “I just don’t want to watch that movie.”
“Oh, Harriet. I had the worst dream. And it was so terrible when I woke up and you weren’t here. You know that Mother loves you, don’t you, Harriet?”
Harriet had a hard time answering. She felt slightly numbed, as if she were underwater: the long shadows, the eerie, greenish lamplight, the breeze washing in the curtains.
“Don’t you know I love you?”
