OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 239 I asked as many of the usual questions as I could think of-Was her room comfortable? How was the food? Did the people seem nice? -but there weren't many of those. "The other residents are...nice," Dorothy said slowly. "They're all pretty old." We observed a moment of silence for them, the other residents. I could see them perfectly, which is to say I could imagine them well, as they sat at the round tables in the dining hall, kyphosis hooking their necks forward till their faces-rough, whiskered, root-like-hung mere inches above their polyester placemats. "Do they tell you where to sit?" I asked suddenly. "In the dining hall I mean, do you have to decide who to sit with at each meal, or are there assigned seats, or....?" "Oh," my mother said. "No. No, they tell you. "Oh! That's good." I nodded stupidly, for emphasis. I was holding the phone receiver to the side of my warm head; the cartilage of the top of my right ear bent back over the stem of my glasses. I was walking back and forth in the front room of Eli and Cassandra's house. "So?" I said at last. "You're feeling okay? About the move?" "What?" My mother sniffed: it was allergies or a cold, a medication side effect or part of a small sob. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I'm sorry," I said. I said it louder. "I'm sorry." "What?" she said. "What?" And then she made a noise that was so much like a laugh; I sat down on the coffee table and listened. She went on. "Darling, what?" she said. "No. I have you and your sister; I have Walter." I was looking down at my bare feet on the wood floor, my dirty soles turned in like a tailor's; I |