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Show Moon - 90 decided she was one of those people who couldn't care about anyone and she'd have to pretend for the rest of her life that she did. Esther sat for a long time without saying anything. She squinted against the setting sun on the water, so that there was a lovely look of suffering to her. Joy leaned back on the heels of her hands, arched her back from the sheer pleasure of this. Then Esther turned to her and said, "I'm sorry about your mother." Joy did not know what she meant, exactly, but she felt that she ought to, so she just shrugged a little. "I think your father should tell her, don't you?" A fish broke the surface of the water, spreading soft circles away from itself. Joy did not understand, and this embarrassed her. And underneath that, she was suddenly afraid, could not force herself to ask, "Tell her what?" Instead, she said, "My father doesn't tell things." She leaped up and said, "I've got to help with dinner," and ran back to the house, her face hot with a shame she didn't know the origin of. They ate in the living room where the fire was because there wasn't room for them all in the small dining room. The meal was slow to arrive, complicated by so many women wanting to find plates that matched, sufficient silverware, big napkins for their laps, something to put the gravy in: "No, not that one, it's chipped!" No one said very much as they ate, except Gloria, who asked questions about Germany, answered most of them herself; even she was silent after a while. They ceremoniously sliced and distributed Alice's cake, which everyone praised effusively. It was German chocolate in many tiny layers, elaborate, too rich, Joy thought. Anne had turned her rocking chair around to |
