Around the Bend by Shirley Jump Read Free Book Online Page B

friendly as the tourist brochure made it out to be, at least not on this late-May day.
    “Let me get that,” I said, taking my father from her. She gave him up without argument, then gripped my arm, her breath coming labored and short as we made our way up the beach to a bench that sat at the edge of the parking lot. “You okay?”
    “I’m perfectly fine.” That no-nonsense, lawyer tone. The dare-you-to-disagree one. I could almost believe her.
    “You don’t sound okay.”
    “Well, I am.” She took a seat on the bench. When she did, I noticed her left leg seemed swollen, larger than the other, and the skin of her foot pressed over and above her shoe, like a marshmallow.
    “Then why are you sitting down? And why is your leg puffy?”
    “I want to enjoy the scenery. And you know I have poor circulation. That car of yours is no help. Stop trying to read something into my every move.” Again, that arguing-for-the-defense voice that left no room for quarreling. I shrugged, loaded Dad in the car, then came back and sat beside her. After a few minutes of silence, she rose and climbed into the Mustang, purse in supermarket position again.
    My hand hesitated over the ignition. I could easily let this go, avoid an argument, get on the road, put some more miles behind us. “What was that about back there?”
    “Your car sits too low. I needed to stretch my legs.”
    I still didn’t believe her, but all my medical knowledge came from watching television, and shows like Grey’s Anatomy . Didn’t exactly make me a medical expert.
    “That’s all?”
    “That’s all.” Ma turned to the window, averting her too-red cheeks from my continued suspicious analysis. “Can we get going? Uncle Morty could drop dead of heart failure by the time we get to his house.”
    “ Now you’re in a rush?”
    In answer, she flipped the road atlas onto her lap and began tracing our future route with her index finger. Plain, short nails. The tips accented with a white pencil that she ran beneath them every morning, part of a daily ritual she’d been doing for as long as I could remember, the nail beds polished with clear, no-nonsense Sally Hanson.
    That pretty much summed up my mother, I realized. Neat, clear and no-nonsense. Whereas I—I looked at my own hands for further clarification of how different I was—had raggedynails. Hilary Delaney—low-maintenance, not always sensible. A mess, my mother would, and had, said.
    Up until now, Nick had liked the mess that was me. But lately, he’d wanted me to straighten, fly in the V that was the rest of middle America. Become part of the two-point-five kids suburbia flock. At some point, I’d have to choose whether to be in that group or without him, and that made my head hurt.
    It made everything hurt.
    I started pulling out of the parking lot, heading back toward Peninsula Drive. The shiny Tom Ridge Environmental Center winked back at us from a little farther down the road. I glanced at my mother, sure she’d want to see this tourist attraction, too, but she was slumped in her seat, clearly tired.
    As I drove, my cell phone rang. I reached for it, in the dish of the car’s console, but my mother was faster. “You are not going to answer that while you’re driving, Hilary. You could cause a wreck.”
    Not a single other car shared the road with us, just a bunch of crazy people on bikes who clearly didn’t notice the wind or what felt like sub-zero temperatures. The sun above was bright, I was barely driving twenty-five miles an hour. To my mother, though, that didn’t constitute a preponderance of evidence on my side, so I didn’t even bother to bring up those facts.
    I appealed to her Reginald emotions. “It’s Nick, Ma. Calling to find out where we’re stopping for the night so he can find us another porcine-friendly motel.”
    The phone rang again. My mother’s grip tightened. “I can talk to him. You drive.”
    “No, no, no. You can not talk to Nick. If you do,