Flying in Place by Susan Palwick Read Free Book Online

door, but before I reached my house I had to pass the Hallorans’, and there was Myrna in her tomato bed, pulling up weeds. Snarky, Snotty, Slimy, and Spot, tethered to chains from which they inevitably escaped, set up a four-part mongrel chorus when they saw me. No one else was in the backyard.
    “Emma!” Myrna said, looking up from her tomatoes. “There you are. I thought you and Jane would be upstairs with your noses in the books. Where is she?”
    “With Billy and Tad,” I said. “In a rowboat on the lake.”
    “Sounds like fun. Why didn’t you go with them?”
    “I didn’t feel like it. I have to study.”
    “Those are good reasons,” Myrna said cheerfully. “How do you feel? You look a little better than you did this morning.”
    I shrugged. “I’m okay.”
    “Are you?” She stood up, dusting earth and bits of grass from her slacks. “Come inside and let me look at that bruise, and then I’ll give you some lemonade.”
    “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m going home now. You don’t need to look at my arm.”
    “No?” She raised one eyebrow. “Well, all right. Would you like the lemonade anyway?”
    I reddened again. Myrna was being nice to me because she knew I didn’t feel well, and I was being rude back. I didn’t need Mom to tell me that Ginny never would have behaved so badly. “Yes, please.”
    “Good,” she said, leading me inside. The house was unusually quiet now that the canine opera in the backyard had faded to whimpers. I couldn’t hear anyone talking; the TV wasn’t even on.
    “Where is everybody?”
    Myrna laughed. “Tom’s working and there are no kids here—can you believe it? Jane’s on the lake and Mike and Andrew are at track practice, and Rob’s over at the Smiths’, and Greg’s playing touch football with some of the Wilson boys and David’s at a play rehearsal. And John and Tom Jr. are busy with their own families and haven’t even spared me any grandchildren to spoil. You’ve never seen this place so empty, have you?”
    “No,” I said. During the time she’d been talking, three of the Hallorans’ five cats had wound themselves around my ankles, and the four dogs had resumed their commotion. They clearly weren’t used to the quiet either, since there were usually at least two children of various ages—not to mention nieces, nephews and hangers-on—to lavish affection on them. My mother called the Halloran household a rabbit warren, but Myrna’s philosophy was simple. “There’s always room for one more,” she’d say, and set another place at the table.
    As a result, the Hallorans’ kitchen always looked like a bomb had exploded somewhere: the dishwasher remained perpetually open and half full, and piles of dishes—both dirty and clean—dotted the counter. The refrigerator was papered with layers of cartoons, grocery lists, first-grade art, recipes, and newspaper articles about health tips, local elections, and gardening. The strata of clippings probably went back ten years; I often wondered how long it had been since the actual surface of the refrigerator had been visible. Next to the telephone hung a huge bulletin board similarly festooned; the only piece of paper not partially obscured by ten other pieces of paper was a large list, carefully lettered in bright red marker readable halfway across the room, of emergency numbers. With the Hallorans’ usual excess, the list extended beyond the standard trio of police, fire, and ambulance to include the Animal Hospital, the Poison Control Center, and the National Guard.
    My mother hated the Hallorans’ kitchen. I found it comforting. Myrna plucked a glass from one of the clusters on the counter—I trusted her to know that it was clean—and poured a glass of lemonade from a huge Tupperware jug, “Here you go, hon. Any idea when Janie’ll be back?”
    “She said an hour.”
    Myrna laughed. “Maybe by dinner, then. Whose boat was it?”
    I hesitated, unwilling to tell on Jane. Myrna’s