A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard Read Free Book Online Page A

birth. After that photo and the interview tension that went with it, Georgia had slept fourteen hours. That had been the beginning of the end. Weight had continued to peel off, and then the tenderness under Georgia’s arm, first attributed to a blocked milk duct, had worsened.
    Not until months later, when Georgia was finally too sick to work, too sick to be alone, and Ray was away, did Lorraine finally take over.
    Neither Mark nor Gordie could do the personal things. And it had been, to Lorraine’s surprise, like having a baby again.
    Two babies, Georgia and Keefer.
    Lorraine loved it. For the first time in decades she hadn’t been running off to her studio or to a conference or to get just one more phone call in before running out the door. She spooned applesauce into Georgia’s mouth. She cut up washcloths and froze them, as she had when Georgia was a baby and teething, to soothe the sores that pitted Georgia’s mouth. After Christmas, Lorraine’s prayers changed. She began to ask the Lord to allow Georgia to simply stay, disabled if she had to be, just as she was. Lorraine would adjust. Mark would adjust. Ray would find a way. They would be like those families Lorraine would see in the street sometimes lifting a child into a motorized wheelchair. She would wrench away her gaze thinking, how can they do it? But it had become second nature.
    It had become a life.
    A life, at least preferable to a death.
    Twenty-four hours from now, Lorraine would have to iron a blouse.
    Unroll new stockings from a package, and put on makeup. Look dignified and smoothed for a ceremony that would end with lowering her little girl into the ground and covering her with dirt. Do that, and then think about it and all the lovely years and unlovely months before it, until she got dementia.

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    So.
    She didn’t have to die, but she didn’t have to really live, either. She had the option of neglecting herself to the point of consequence, and it made her feel free.
    She had a job. She’d had a job. She could no more do it than be a shepherd or run the honey wagon for Septic King. She’d loved her job, her small art shows, working with other teachers. Could she go back to school? Teach? Teach girls whose every gesture—even the absent tucking of a strand of hair behind one ear while reading—would make her shriek and keen for her daughter? Could she even go through the motions?
    Think of Gordon, Nora would say. Think of Mark.
    Think of Keefer.
    She would not think of Keefer.
    She would think of Gordon. But not protectively. Gordon adored her, but he was self-sufficient, even self-absorbed. He had copious things to keep him occupied, and with Keefer, he’d have things to occupy him without end. He’d had a markless life to this point. Co-valedictorian. The hallowed Florida State golf team. The credit for that was all Gordie’s, but true, he’d been raised by parents so grateful to have him and so determined to prove it, that they’d gone forth into family life with missionary zeal. The high school principal, Hart Rooney, had once confided to Lorraine that her kids were so great he would never have suspected they were adopted. Lorraine had never spoken to the man again.
    Mark, well . . . she could not imagine ever again being his life’s most amiable companion. Mark would be lonely and bemused. But Lorraine was not responsible for him. She would no longer be able to tantalize him and surprise him, lead him on the lively chase for her approval that she had somehow been able to play for more than thirty years. Could she ever attend another Medi-Sun Christmas banquet, accept her stocking full of SuperC and B-Blasts with the smile all Mark’s coworkers told him was visible from Saturn? Mark would . . . oh, Mark would under-take good works, in Georgia’s name.
    Perhaps he would remarry.

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    JACQUELYN MITCHARD
    In any case, Mark was