Loose Screws by Karen Templeton Read Free Book Online

child. Nor has she yet been able to accept the hopelessness of converting me.
    The good news is that the stinging usually doesn’t last for long. Underneath the insecurities, I’m not the piece of fluff I appear. I can survive a Nedra attack, much as I’d probably survive a tornado. And while that doesn’t mean I have the slightest desire to move to Kansas, I have also learned how to play the game.
    Take now, for instance. I open my door, glower at her.Take the offensive for the few seconds she’ll let me have it. After all, she doesn’t know I’ve been tipped off.
    â€œNedra! What the hell are you doing here?”
    â€œOh, would you just get over it and let me be a mother, already?”
    â€œThat’s what I’m afraid of.”
    She barges in, a grocery bag banging against her leg.
    â€œI thought I told you I didn’t want company?”
    â€œYou’re distraught,” she says. “You have no idea what you want. Or need. And right now, you need a mother’s support.”
    Except then she scans my outfit, disapproval radiating from her expression. Not because of the way I’m dressed, but because she knows I spent big bucks on it. She, on the other hand, is in full aging-hippie regalia—print broomstick skirt, white T-shirt underneath a loose embroidered blouse (no bra), Dr. Scholl’s wooden sandals.
    I cross my arms. Glower some more. “Don’t worry. They’re all made in America.” Never mind that my avowal is full of bunk, and we both know it—the shoes, especially, positively scream Italian—but even at her lowest, Nedra isn’t likely to yank out a tag and check. Instead, she gives in to five thousand years of genetic conditioning and goes all Jewish Mother Affronted on me.
    â€œDid I say anything?”
    â€œYou didn’t have to. And how old is that skirt, anyway?”
    She waves away my objection and clomps toward my kitchen, and I once again—much to my chagrin—stand in awe of my mother’s commanding presence.
    On a good day Nedra reminds me a lot of Anne Bancroft. Today, however, the effect is more that of a drag queen doing an impression of Anne Bancroft. Rivers of gray surge through her dark, shoulder-length hair, as thick and unruly as mine. The bones in her face jut; her brows are dark slashes over heavy-lidded, nearly black eyes; her mouth, never enhanced with lipstick, is full, the lips sharply defined. Although she has never smoked—at least not cigarettes, and never in my presence—her voice is low and roughened from one too many demonstrations; her boobssag and sway over a rounded stomach and broad hips; her hands are large and strong, the nails blunt.
    And yet there is no denying how magnetically attractive she is. She moves with the confidence of a woman totally comfortable with her body, her womanhood. All my life, I have noticed the way men become mesmerized in her presence. Struck dumb, many of them, I’m sure, but I early on learned to recognize the haze of respectful lust. Not that I’ve ever been the recipient of such a thing—not in that combination, at least. A shame, almost, that she’s refused to date since my father died. She insists love and marriage and men are part of her history; now she’s free to devote her life to her work, her causes, and, when I don’t duck quickly enough, to me. Yes, she is a formidable woman, someone you instinctively want on your side—or as far away from your side as possible—but her sexuality is so potent, so uncontrived and primal, she could easily serve as a model for some pagan fertility goddess.
    The clothing disagreement has been laid to rest for the moment in favor of—I see her scan the apartment—reviving the Living Space Dispute.
    My fists clench.
    â€œI still don’t see,” she says, plunking down the grocery bag filled with something intriguingly solid onto my counter, “why you