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Show Woodworth/210 On Friday, Megan comes home. The house is filled with the bubble of the family expanding, as if Jake, too, might come home. Marty drifts among them, boueyed with secrets. 9 M ^ ^•^•^•••iBMtaOTWBiaBflel^HiMBBlHB^ For the first time since Jake died, she feels a communion with them. She is a woman. She has joined their side. Even if they don't know it. Even towards Ruth, stuffed into her chair, wrapped in a sodden bathrobe and puffy with alcohol, Marty feels a kinship. It's hard. It's hard to be loved and loving. They sit in the living room until midnight, listening to Megan who chatters like a rare bird, dressed gaily in her city clothes. Megan doesn't understand. But it doesn't matter. She will soon enough. Megan sits far forward on the couch. She has had her hair cut, a sharp diagonal across her forehead, a side-part, the hair shingles down to her shoulders. It looks good. Megan looks good. Marty is pleased that she feels no jealousy in the thought. Her hands dart as she talks, as if picking words from the air and forming them into sentences. Her skin is pale, flawless except for the ridge where the line of make-up begins under each che'ek-bone. Ruth sits back heavily in her chair, her eyes on her daughter. Something about Megan makes her feel naked, her suckled breasts like banana peels, lying flat against her chest. Her skin is mottled, like bruised fruit, and her breathing seems to come from the back of her throat, to spread out her lips and down into her lungs, without really satisfying her need for air. Her hair lies soft and grayish against her head. Marty loves her, seeing herself someday, sitting in that chair, looking at her children. Her mother glances at her, her expression blank. Stares for a minute, then looks away. Megan flounces out of the room in search of jy&ce", a snack, and tKe Browning heaviness settles in again. |