Words and Their Meanings by Kate Bassett Read Free Book Online Page A

after Gran died, but he still gets lots of calls at home. He’s a fixer.
    He tells me Gran stories, about how she was this brilliant artist and if she couldn’t paint she would have gone crazy.
    â€œEven when the painting felt dark. Even when it was scary. But mostly, she had to paint because she liked to do it. If you don’t like writing anymore, then find something else you do like. You aren’t just one thing, Anna. You can redefine yourself without needing to copy another person’s life or spending part of every day acting like you no longer exist. It’s wasteful, what you are doing.”
    Gramps might be a retired electronics repair guy, but I’m pretty sure in a past life he was a monk. A monk who talked way too much.
    But before I went to bed last night, I pulled an empty notebook from under my bed. Scribbled on a corner of the page until the dying pen I found started leaving its mark.
    Rain clouds hang low and sluggish, ready to burst the minute their bellies hit a building corner or church steeple. I will them toward downtown, where angles are sharp, rusted. I want it to pour. I want to hear water pound down against the roof and windows and pavement. It has been one year since Joe died. I was sixteen, and now I’m seventeen. He was nineteen, and he’ll never be twenty. No one but Sameera said his name today. Not Mom. Not Dad, who didn’t even call to see if I went to work as promised. Not Gramps or Bea or Nat. I spent today proving to everyone I can start over and that they can stop worrying I’m a Sylvia Plath in the making. This seems oddly hilarious, considering Bea’s the only one who has ever stuck her head (shoulders, arms, legs) in the oven.

10
    W hatever cohesive feeling Mom and I shared last night has vanished. She’s sitting across the table, fiddling with a spoon left over from Bea’s late-night ice cream raid. I stare at my breakfast/lunch bowl of cereal, eating tension with every bite.
    â€œI want to make sure you are feeling okay. I understand what you’ve been going through more than I think you realize.”
    The way it comes out, I know the lines have been well rehearsed.
    â€œYou disappeared upstairs and didn’t come down until you left with Nat, which is why I didn’t talk about it with you yesterday, like I’d planned. I just don’t understand why you haven’t been able to say it to me, how this whole makeover is about not dealing with grief. It’s so obvious to us, Anna, and you can’t seem to see it. We’re all going through it too, and you need to talk to me about it … You and I, we can face it together.”
    Sure. Because “it” is a topic so easily broached, “it” can be discussed without even using a name. I want to scream, JOE IS NOT AN IT !
    Instead I chew my organic Cheerios-like cereal. Tap out a beat on the table with my fingers. Hope the noise will drown her out. No such luck.
    â€œThere’s a lot I wish I could change … about everything … after you found out … I’m not sure what happened next was 100 percent tied to you not getting to … to say goodbye, like all the therapists have suggested.”
    Her words are paralyzing darts. I can’t leave. Can’t tell her to shut up, right now, please and thank you. I can only listen. And hold my breath.
    Her gaze shifts out the window. The leaves on the big maple in our front yard shift back and forth, a thousand hands waving.
    It wasn’t just about not saying goodbye. No kidding.
    â€“––––
    The night Joe died, I’d promised my parents I would stay home with Bea. They, in turn, promised Joe was improving. But Bea was restless and I couldn’t get her pajamas buttoned straight, and finally we both looked at each other and understood what we needed to do. She walked wordlessly into her room, grabbed her big bunny slippers (which were mine before hers, and