Loose Screws by Karen Templeton Read Free Book Online Page B

out.”
    â€œWell, no, I’m not, I suppose. I couldn’t stand the thought of your marrying into that bunch of phonies.”
    An exquisite pain darts through my left temple. “Just because they don’t live the way you do, don’t think the way you do, that doesn’t make them phonies.”
    She gives me that okay-if-that’s-what-you-want-to-believe look, then says, “Whatever. But what I feel about them doesn’t matter. Not right now. I can still feel badly for you. I know you loved him.”
    And I can tell it nearly kills her to admit that. But before I can say anything else, she goes on.
    â€œAnd it kills me to know you’re hurting. I remember what it feels like, suddenly being single again. And it’s the pits.”
    I’m staring at her, unblinking. Is this a “Twilight Zone” moment or what? Empathy? From Nedra? On a personal level?
    I think I feel dizzy.
    â€œAnd I also know what it feels like,” she continues, her dark eyes riveted to mine, “the first time you go out into the world after something like this. That you look at everyone around you and wonder how they can just go on, living their normal lives, when your own has fallen apart.”
    For the first time, I notice the dark circles under her eyes, that she looks tired. Worried, even.
    I have seen my mother outraged, exhilarated, devastated. But not once that I can remember have I ever seen the look in her eyes I see now. And I realize she’s really not here to torture me, at least not intentionally, but because she needs me to need her. As a mother, as a friend, as anything I’ll let her be.
    Oh, dear God. She wants to bond? To do the whole we-are-sisters-in-tribulation thing?
    My eyes are stinging as I turn away to toss my sunglasses and a book into a straw tote. The criticism, the clashing of opinions…I know how to brace myself against those, how to grit my teeth against the sting. This…this compassion, this whatever it is…
    I have no idea what to do with that.
    â€œWe better get going,” I say, snatching the stupid video off the coffee table before tramping through the door.
    Â 
    An hour and a half later things have returned to normal. Or what passes for normal between my mother and me. We got into a political fracas before I even hailed the taxi, an argument that wasn’t fully cold in its grave when we arrived at Grand Central and she launched into an unprovoked attack on several hapless passersby for ignoring a homeless man on the sidewalk, to whom she gave a ten dollar bill.
    It was ever thus. I know my parents sure didn’t earn the big bucks as instructors at Columbia, especially not in those early years, but they were profoundly aware of those who had less, to the point where their socialistic consciousnesses weren’t at peace unless they’d given away so much of their earnings to this or that cause, we were barely better off than the poor wretches they supported. Generosity is all well and good—don’t look at me like that, I give to charity, jeez—but weeks of living off lentils and boxed macaroni and cheese night after night because we couldn’t afford anything else got old real fast.
    I suppose they thought, or at least hoped, their altruistic example would instill a like-minded spirit of sacrifice for the common good in their daughter. Instead, a childhood of forced culinary deprivation has only fostered an insatiable craving for prime rib and ridiculously expensive, ugly little fruits that are only in season like two days a year.
    So. I pretended I’d never seen her before in my life as I sauntered into Grand Central as gracefully as one can with a trio of soft-sided canvas bags in assorted sizes hanging about one’s person. I was also profoundly grateful it was ninety degrees and therefore highly unlikely we’d pass somebody wearing a fur. Don’t even think about walking down Fifth Avenue with