OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 72 I was twisting the wheelchair handles, revving silently as I watched the Reeds. Then I looked away from them. The other passengers came at us like nothing. Pavia sat still as a prop in front of me, her wig like a dirty lather on top of her head. And then I realized, with a sharp, angina-like pain, that I was the one with the handles in my hand, and it was my job to take my sister away. So I backed the chair up and we followed the crowd back down around the concourse. When we got to the baggage claim I just kept pushing past the luggage carousels and out the glass door to the street, where Pavia stood up and followed me to the parking garage. Neither of us said anything all the way home until, as I wrenched the steering wheel back and forth as I parallel parked in front of the townhouse, I was hitting the curb repeatedly with the tires. Then my sister said aloud, finally, "I don't need their fucking money anyway," and I pulled hard on the wheel again and agreed through gritted teeth, with all my heart. Dorothy and Joseph slept through our return from the airport and the ringing of the phone. It was Eli calling, and later when he came over I kissed him at the door abruptly. "Sorry!" I said, embarrassed. I licked my chapped and slightly fraying lips, pulled off a strip of skin with my fingers. "Poky, huh? I guess I'm a kind of thistle." |