Labor Day by Joyce Maynard Read Free Book Online

their meal. If they put too much on the spoon, you’d have to take it, or too little, you could sit there with your mouth open, begging. You might think this would leave a person feeling mad or desperate, in which case the only thing they could do about it was to spit the food back out at the person who was giving it to them. Then go hungry.
    But there was something about the way Frank fed my mother that made the whole thing almost beautiful, like he was a jeweler or a scientist, or one of those old Japanese men who work all day on a single bonsai.
    Every spoonful, he made sure it was the right amount, so she wouldn’t choke on the food, and none of it would drool over the side of her lips onto her chin. You knew he understood she was the type of person who cared about how she looked, even when she was tied up in her own kitchen with nobody but her son and an escaped prisoner there to see her. Maybe how she looked to her son didn’t matter, but the other part did.

    Before he lifted the spoon to her mouth, he blew on the chili, to not burn her tongue. Every few spoonfuls, he understood she should have something to drink. This would be water or wine, depending. He alternated those without her having to say which.
    Unlike dinners with me, where she was always talking, telling her stories, we ate in near total silence that night. It was as if they didn’t need to speak, these two. Their eyes were locked on each other. Still, many things were coming across: the way she arched her neck toward him, like a bird in the nest, the way his body leaned forward in the chair, like a painter in front of a piece of canvas. Sometimes making a brushstroke. Other times, just studying his work.
    Partway through the meal, a drop of tomato sauce trickled onto my mother’s cheek. She could have licked it off with her own tongue probably, but she must have understood by this point that there would be no need. He dipped his napkin into the glass of water and touched it to her skin. His finger also touched the skin of her cheek then, for a moment, to dry it off. She made a small nodding motion. Easy to miss, but her hair had brushed his hand, and when that happened, he’d taken the strand of hair and brushed it off her face.
    He himself did not eat. I had been hungry, but sitting there now, at the table with the two of them, it felt as crude to chew or swallow as it would have to munch on popcorn at a baby’s christening, or lick an ice-cream cone while your friend told you his dog died. I shouldn’t be here was how I felt.
    I guess I’ll take my dinner in the living room, I said. Watch some TV.
    The telephone was also there of course. I could have picked it up and dialed. The door, the neighbors, the car with the key in it—nothing had changed. I turned on Three’s Company and ate my chili.

    A few shows later, when I got tired, I looked back in the kitchen. The dishes had been cleared away and washed. He had fixed tea, but nobody was drinking any. I could hear the low sound of their voices, though not the words they said.
    I called out then that I was going to bed. This was the moment my mother would normally have said “Sweet dreams,” but she was occupied.

CHAPTER 5
    M Y MOTHER DIDN’T HAVE A REGULAR JOB , but she sold vitamins over the phone to people. Every couple of weeks the company she worked for—MegaMite—sent her a printout with phone numbers of potential customers all around our region, to call up and tell about the product. Every time she sold a vitamin package, the company paid her a commission. We also got a discount on vitamins for ourselves, which was a fringe benefit. She made sure I took my MegaMites twice a day. She could see the results in my eyeballs, she said. Some people had these grayish corneas, but mine were white as an egg, and the other thing she’d noticed already was how, unlike so many other kids my age (not that she saw other kids my age much), I did not suffer from acne.
    You are too young to