The Blessings by Elise Juska Read Free Book Online Page B

spicy—Elena throws a box of Oreos on the floor. “Elena!” Lauren exclaims. Elena stares back at her, unmoved. She throws another box, sending it skidding across the floor, and starts to laugh. “Elena! Stop that!” Lauren says, shocked, thinking: This is not my daughter. This is not my life! Elena keeps throwing boxes, one after the other, laughing, until Lauren takes her by the elbow. The spell breaks, Elena’s face crumples, and she starts to shriek. People look at Lauren, surely thinking she’s a terrible mother. She yanks Max out of the half-full cart, grabs Elena by the hand, and leaves the store.
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    When I’m not here, you can talk to me anytime.
    Lauren is listening from outside Elena’s bedroom door. She is struck by how weak John’s voice is, weaker because she can’t see him.
    But where are you going?
    Heaven.
    Can I come?
    I’m afraid not, sweetheart.
    But why?
    It’s not the kind of place you can visit , John says solemnly. He has answers at the ready. Lauren has to push her hands in her mouth to keep from screaming.
    But where is it?
    It’s all around , he tells her. It’s in the air. In the sky.
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    Outside the house, everyday things have a quality of unreality. The beep of the grocery belt in the Thriftway. The cashier with the blotchy skin asking in a bored tone: Would you like to donate a dollar to UNICEF today? The car in the parking lot, the fearless teenagers inside it, music blaring from its windows. Sometimes it startles her, the world. How bright and sharp and loud things are.
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    Lauren knows she shouldn’t keep breast-feeding but can’t make herself stop. Probably she’s using Max to comfort herself, embedding some attachment issues that will cripple him when he’s older. It will be a struggle, getting him on a bottle later. But there is no later. Nursing her baby, pressing his warm skin against hers, gazing out the window of the nursery at the backyard, is the only time she doesn’t feel abject terror—the dew on the grass in the mornings, the unkempt purple flowers, the pool cover strewn with leaves, and in late spring, the wild growth of daffodils and tulips, bursting up in bunches, untended.
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    Two days to two weeks , the doctor says.
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    Lauren. Something isn’t right. She will always recall every facet of this moment, like turning a diamond in the light: how John looked standing there in the bedroom doorway, hand pressed against his back. How he called her Lauren, not Laur, which meant that it was serious. How for a split second she thought he was unhappy with her —that the something was about their marriage—sending a geyser of panic up her middle. But then she saw his face and knew it was something else, something worse. His expression was so vulnerable—she will always remember this, too—and it occurred to her then that maybe his family had known something about him she didn’t, that John did have a strain of helplessness that Lauren had just never seen before, never needed to. And she would remember thinking, despite the quickening of her pulse, how handsome he looked, and how sweet life seemed just then, her husband standing in the light streaming through the bedroom window, Max nestled in her lap, Elena calling upstairs from the kitchen where she was finishing her waffle: Daddy! I’m done!

The Lookout
    S tephen didn’t want to go through with it but there he is, standing in the parking lot behind the Wendy’s on Rhawn Street. Lately, everything in his life felt like this. He doesn’t want to do something, knows he shouldn’t, but suddenly there he is, doing it anyway. It’s like something just goes slack inside him, the way he lets his right eye wander when he’s tired. In the end, his friends start hassling him or cheering him on and it seems like too much work to resist, and he thinks, Fuck it .
    They’re