Porch Lights by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online

mean? And her antique lace pillowcases were on the bed too. Was she giving them to me? Or was she just trying to make me feel better? Then I saw the books and the water bottle and tote bag with the visor and all the other things she’d put in the room for me. I stopped and thought about her generosity. I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pink visor and I wasn’t particularly a fan of her choice of reading material, but she couldn’t have known that. She was just trying to protect my eyes from the glare of the blasting sun and give me something to occupy my time. It was nice of her, as were all the things she had bought for Charlie. But it was also a little overwhelming. I didn’t want to be in her debt. I didn’t want to be in anyone’s debt. And a lifetime of experience in dealing with her had taught me how she operated.
    If I seemed gloomy, she would say, “Well, what else on this blessed earth can I do to make you happy? What do you expect from me?” And then I would seem like the Ungrateful Child and probably say, “Well, what do you want from me?” Then she would tell me that I had to snap out of it for Charlie’s sake and I would say I was doing my best but I missed my husband. Then she would stare at me wondering why I had married a fireman in the first place, and I would be infuriated. You see, there’s a big part of my mother’s lofty opinion of her social position that I think she stole from Lady Astor. She had no reason to think she was some highfalutin socialite, but she did. And I had no apologies to make about living a middle-class life without pretension. We were polar opposites when it came to those things, and that’s all there was to that.
    I turned around to see Charlie standing in my doorway. “What’s up, baby?”
    “My stomach hurts,” he said.
    “Ate too much?” I asked.
    “Yeah. I hate okra.”
    “I used to, but now I can eat anything. You should see some of the stuff I had to eat in Tikrit. It looked like dog food. Or maybe it was dog.”
    Charlie gagged. “Gross. Maybe I’ll just go lie down for a little while.”
    “Good idea. Try and get a nap.”
    “Yeah, maybe. Okay.”
    I thought, Great, now my son is an emotional eater. He stuffed himself at lunch just to please my mother. She was an awfully good cook; I mean, she was a much better cook than I’d ever be.
    I put the quilt on the chair and began to unpack. I didn’t need to be a great cook. It seemed to me that people who cooked like mad just made work for themselves.
    I looked at the sorry clothes I had thrown into my suitcase. Mostly I had brought shorts and T-shirts, bathing suits, and a couple of things I could wear to church or out to dinner if we felt like going somewhere else to eat. I figured that if we didn’t have something we really needed we could buy it. It wasn’t like Sullivans Island was deep in the jungle or something. Downtown Charleston was only minutes away, and Mount Pleasant was loaded with stores.
    I could hear Charlie groaning from his room, so I stuck my head in his door. “You feeling a little green around the gills?” I asked. “Want me to see if Glam-ma has something to settle your stomach?”
    He sat straight up, and his face was filled with panic.
    “No! Don’t say anything!”
    “Why not?”
    He whispered to me, “Because I don’t want her to think her soup made me sick.”
    “Oh, honey. I don’t think it was the soup. I think it might have been the quantity.”
    “Whatever! Just don’t say anything, okay? I’m fine!”
    “Okay. I won’t say anything. Why don’t you relax for a bit, and then we can take a walk on the beach? How’s that? Say, half hour?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Sounds like a plan.”
    The half hour came and went, and when I went back to his room he was fast asleep. Poor thing. He was worried about my mother’s feelings. He would do without something to ease his distress rather than risk bruising her ego. Even at ten years old he already knew not to