House of Wonder by Sarah Healy Read Free Book Online Page B

watched the screen. “I always just sang.” She took a breath, watching the girls parade around the stage. “I never did like the swimsuit portion, though.”
    Though I could think of dozens of reasons why that might be, I wanted to hear hers. “Why?” I asked.
    She shifted, settled deeper into the corner of the couch. “In the bigger pageants, they used to announce your height and weight.” She gestured toward the television. “When you first came out onstage.”
    I felt my expression turn incredulous. “They did?”
    Her eyes didn’t leave the screen. “Sure,” she said, finding this bit of trivia wholly unremarkable. “The audience liked to know that sort of thing.”
    I looked at my mother, at the soft sag of her skin beneath her chin, and the rounding of her body. It seemed as though we often bumped into subjects from which she gently steered us away. Over the years, her beauty queen days had become one of them. “Did you get nervous?”
    â€œOh, yeah,” she said. “I hated pageants.”
    I rearranged myself on the couch, angling my body toward her. “Then why did you do them?”
    She looked at me for a moment, as though she wasn’t sure why I needed to ask. “What else was I going to do?” she asked. When I didn’t answer, she gave me a small, sad smile. “I wasn’t smart, honey.” She said it as if it were an innocuous fact. “And even if I was, your grandfather didn’t think girls needed to go to college.” Though she turned back to the television, her gaze remained soft and unfocused. “I got lucky,” she said. “At least I was pretty. If I wasn’t . . .” She shook her head. “I’d probably still be in Texas changing old Hattie’s bedpans.”
    Hattie was my mother’s stepmother. Whenever her name came up, it felt as though the air in the room became colder and thinner. She had married my grandfather when my mother wasabout seven years old, just a few years after my grandmother died. My mother didn’t talk much about Hattie, though they were each all that the other had left by way of family. I had met her once, when my grandfather was still alive and they came to Harwick for their one and only visit. Though I thought Hattie was glamorous and beautiful, my mother’s voice had turned shrill and angry when she was here. She burned dinner. She slammed doors. Warren wouldn’t come out of his room, and spent their entire visit working on his planes.
Come on,
I had urged, as he put paintbrush to wing.
She’s nice. She gave me ten bucks.
    â€œOh, I love this part,” Mom said, bringing my attention back to the TV. “Isn’t Phoebe Cates just
gorgeous
in this movie?” she asked, her words slow and long as she pointed toward the screen. But I couldn’t take my eyes off my mother.
    We finished
Shag
and Mom dug through the racks of tapes near the entertainment center for another option, while I checked my cell phone for any calls from Rose. Without looking at me, Mom said, “It’s a good sign if you don’t hear from her. Means she’s having fun.” Then she held up another box.
“
Steel Magnolias
?”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    I opened my eyes, blinking against the dim light in the room. I had fallen asleep. On the television, the credits were rolling down a black screen. I looked at my mother, who’d also dozed off, her chin sunk back into her neck, dark smears of mascara having found their way into the lines around her eyes.
    We both seemed to wake simultaneously. In those transient seconds between slumber and consciousness, I heard the sound of the front door being gently shut. Gordo let out a single,belated bark, then stared at me, as if covering up for his lack of vigilance. My gaze went to the digital clock display on the cable box. On Saturday nights, Warren