Solitaria by Genni Gunn Read Free Book Online Page B

your mother never wrote.”
    â€œMom doesn’t write letters,” he says. She didn’t, not even to him all those years ago, when he was a child, waiting by the mail slot.
    â€œAnd you?” she asks.
    â€œI wrote you for years,” he says.
    â€œWhen you were a child, maybe, a few letters now and then…”
    â€œIt was so long ago,” David says. “I don’t remember. I —”
    â€œYou don’t remember. You don’t remember anything.” Piera sighs and reaches for her cigarettes on the bedside table. “You’re just like Clarissa.” Her tone is a heavy cadence, inevitable disappointment.
    She’s the one who doesn’t remember, he thinks. Selective memory.
    Piera sniffles beside him, then strikes a match.
    David flicks on the bedside lamp. “So you’re well enough to smoke now.”
    Piera shrugs, lowering her lids in that slow-motion way. Then she lifts her legs over the side of the bed and gets up. David rises too, alarmed, and hurries to her side, but Piera waves him away. Then she shuffles toward the en suite bathroom, where she sits on the toilet, door open, and smokes a full cigarette.
    â€œYou can come in and talk to me,” she says.
    David sits on the edge of the bathtub and watches her. How different she is from Clarissa, his proud, elegant mother.
    â€œWhat?” Piera says, as if David had spoken aloud.
    David shakes his head.
    â€œDon’t tell me you’re shocked,” Piera says. “Everyone goes to the bathroom. Even your queen.”
    David shrugs. Piera is a sight: wrinkled nightgown bunched at her waist; thin bedraggled hair, elbows leaning on her thighs, the cigarette held in her hand, between her spread legs.
    â€œAnyhow, I leave the door open in case I fall.”
    â€œMaybe you should go to physiotherapy,” David says.
    â€œAnd then what?” she says. “Quacks.”
    â€œZia Piera,” David says. “The funeral. Your brother. The family.”
    â€œThey all hate me,” she says, voice quivering, “but everything I did, I did for love.”
    â€œThey need to know.”
    â€œNobody understands,” she says.
    When she stubs out her cigarette and reaches for toilet paper, David returns to the bedroom, to its saints and martyrs. Anachronistic. He thinks of his own bedroom in Vancouver, its wall-to-wall plate glass window. How unlike this dark, overcast room.
    He hears water running, then Piera returns, her hair combed, her eyes bright. She opens one of the cupboards, takes out a large box, and sets it on the bed. Then she sits across from him and opens the lid. “What can I say to defend myself?” In the box is a thick journal — part scrapbook, part diary — its pages wavy with glue, and fanned out with photos, cards, bits of cloth, letters, and other items David can only guess at.
    â€œIn here,” she says tapping the box, “is all that remains. I’ve been writing this down for years.” She pauses, leans across the bed for her cigarettes, lights one, and blows a halo of smoke towards David. “This is for you, then. For Vito. For all the forgotten and the unknown.”
    He reaches for the journal, but she pulls it back.
    â€œWe’ll go through it together,” she says, “but I’ll read it to you. That way, I can explain what’s not written down.”
    All that remains , he thinks. A life imprisoned between covers.
    â€œClarissa,” she says, “left us and rarely came back.” She takes another puff, holds it in her lungs for a moment, then exhales another blue cloud.
    â€œMom was very busy,” David says, thinking how often he has excused all her neglect this way.
    Piera waves her hand in the air. “Everyone is busy. And you?” she asks. “Didn’t you wonder about us?”
    He shifts in the chair. “We tend to live in the present,” he says. “There’s