The Joyce Maynard Collection by Joyce Maynard Read Free Book Online

believer in medicine, but she kept rubbing alcohol under the sink. She didn’t want him to get an infection, she said. And maybe they could rig up some kind of splint for his ankle.
    We’ll have you back to how you were before you know it, she said.
    What if I don’t want to be how I was? he said. What if I want to be different now?
    H E FED HER . M Y HANDS WERE FREE , but because hers were tied, he set the plate in front of himself on the table, but close enough for the fork to reach. And he was right about the chili he made us. The best I ever tasted.
    How it was, watching him bring the food to her lips, and watching her take it, was nothing like my mother’s friend, Evelyn, when she used to come over with Barry, and she’d give him his meals. Or Marjorie with the baby they called my little sister, spooning the peaches into her mouth while she was talking on the phone or yelling at Richard about something, so at least half of the meal dripped down the front of Chloe’s sleeper suit without Marjorie even noticing. You might think it would be a little humiliating for a person, having to sit there like that, relying on this other person to give them their meal. If they put too much on the spoon, you’d have to take it, or too little, you could sit there with your mouth open, begging. You might think this would leave a person feeling mad or desperate, in which case the only thing they could do about it was to spit the food back out at the person who was giving it to them. Then go hungry.
    But there was something about the way Frank fed my mother that made the whole thing almost beautiful, like he was a jeweler or a scientist, or one of those old Japanese men who work all day on a single bonsai.
    Every spoonful, he made sure it was the right amount, so she wouldn’t choke on the food, and none of it would drool over the side of her lips onto her chin. You knew he understood she was the type of person who cared about how she looked, even when she was tied up in her own kitchen with nobody but her son and an escaped prisoner there to see her. Maybe how she looked to her son didn’t matter, but the other part did.
    Before he lifted the spoon to her mouth, he blew on the chili, to not burn her tongue. Every few spoonfuls, he understood she should have something to drink. This would be water or wine, depending. He alternated those without her having to say which.
    Unlike dinners with me, where she was always talking, telling her stories, we ate in near total silence that night. It was as if they didn’t need to speak, these two. Their eyes were locked on each other. Still, many things were coming across: the way she arched her neck toward him, like a bird in the nest, the way his body leaned forward in the chair, like a painter in front of a piece of canvas. Sometimes making a brushstroke. Other times, just studying his work.
    Partway through the meal, a drop of tomato sauce trickled onto my mother’s cheek. She could have licked it off with her own tongue probably, but she must have understood by this point that there would be no need. He dipped his napkin into the glass of water and touched it to her skin. His finger also touched the skin of her cheek then, for a moment, to dry it off. She made a small nodding motion. Easy to miss, but her hair had brushed his hand, and when that happened, he’d taken the strand of hair and brushed it off her face.
    He himself did not eat. I had been hungry, but sitting there now, at the table with the two of them, it felt as crude to chew or swallow as it would have to munch on popcorn at a baby’s christening, or lick an ice-cream cone while your friend told you his dog died. I shouldn’t be here was how I felt.
    I guess I’ll take my dinner in the living room, I said. Watch some TV.
    The telephone was also there of course. I could have picked it up and dialed. The door, the neighbors, the car with the key in it—nothing had changed.