The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online Page A

kill our backs.”
    “It didn’t hurt last year,” I said.
    “Yeah, it did.”
    “Did it hurt just
you
or both of us?”
    She smiled and fastened her long hair up into a twist that she anchored with a barrette she pulled from her robe pocket. “Actually, you complained for hours after we got off.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes.”
    “Oh.”
    My mother got up to put coffee mugs on the table. “I haven’t been on one of those things for thirty years. Your father used to make me go with him, but I always hated it. I kept my eyes shut and gritted my teeth the whole time.”
    “Wasn’t your first date with Dad at the fair?” I asked. We grew up hearing stories about my parents’ romance. The most interesting one had to do with the time my father was in the navy and got a letter from my mother, who at that point was his fiancée. He opened the envelope on deck on a windy day, and the letter blew out of his hand. He actually jumped into the ocean after it.
    “But that’s crazy!” I’d said, when I head the story. And he’d said, “Yeah, I guess it was. A lot of my shipmates said the same thing. They thought it was wrong for a man to be so much in love with a woman.” He chuckled. “But I was.” Then, leaning closer to me, he’d said, “I still am, too.”
    I’d said, “Well, that’s great, Dad,” but I wasn’t sure I really meant it. I appreciated the outlandish sentimentality of his diving into the drink, but I thought his friends were right: To love someone that much was a dangerous thing.
    The coffeemaker beeped and I got up to pour for all of us. My mother took a sip, then said, “Well, you remember that we met at the movies. And we sat together that night. But, yes, our first official date was going to the fair. We were nineteen years old, can you imagine? Your father had never paid to get into the state fair in his life. It was a matter of honor with him. So he gave me money to get in and told me where to meet him. Then he went and snuck in under the fence.”
    “What fence?” I asked. “I’ll send the kids, save a few bucks.”
    “It’s not there anymore,” my mother said. “And shame on you.”
    “Shame on her?” Caroline said loudly. “
Shame
on her?”
    My mother and I both looked over at her. “It’s a joke,” I said finally.
    “No,” Caroline said, “it isn’t.”
    “Caroline,” I said, sighing.
    “Is it, Mom?”
    My mother, flustered, started to answer when the basement door off the kitchen opened and Pete appeared. “Morning!” he said. And then, “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing,” we answered, all three of us together. And then, while my mother poured coffee for Pete, Caroline headed for the bathroom and I went upstairs to tell the kids to get ready.

7
    PETE, STEVE, AND THE KIDS WERE ON THE ROLLER coaster for the second time. Caroline and I were sitting on a bench waiting for them. Caroline was right—we were too old to go on that ride. My rib cage hurt from where I’d slammed into the side of the car and Caroline’s knee was bruised from the safety bar. “Tell you what,” Caroline said, “let’s make a deal. Let’s support each other in vowing never to go on that damn ride again. If anyone asks, we stand together in our absolute refusal.”
    “Fine with me,” I said. My back hurt too.
    Caroline leaned against the bench and smiled at the sight of a mother pulling a wagon by us, two sleeping children in it. She looked at her watch. “Eleven o’clock. They conked out early, huh?”
    “They’ve probably been here since six,” I said. Seeing a pattern I liked in the leaves of the tree across the way from us, I pulled a small sketch pad out of my purse and did a rough drawing. It was the overlapping quality I liked, an edge next to an edge next to an edge.
    Caroline looked over my shoulder. “What’s that for?”
    “I don’t know. Something.”
    She sighed. “Always working.”
    I looked up at her, surprised. “I’m not always working!”
    “Yeah, you