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Show Woodworth/7 trip. Through the hole in the wire fence, and on to Coolidge- Coolidge is all up hill, a dead end that splits into the Grayson's driveway, or circles back on itself in the Browning's driveway. That's home, above the hedges, behind the mailbox with its red flag and "Browning" in red letters. Windows that seem covered with cataracts stare blindly from between black shutters. Fresh white paint that always looks dirty or shabby to her father. A crown of chimneys that lead down to bricked-up fireplaces behind doors that are nailed shut. The house isn't big, exactly. It's even diminuitive next to the Grayson's. But it faces down. Down at Westfield, at traffic lights, at commuter buses, at lines in the market, at homes without yards. Her mother's car is in the driveway. Marty takes the cement stairs two at a time, enters her home. Ruth is watching television, her lunch on a plate in her lap. Everyone says Marty looks like her mother. Megan looks like her father. Jake looked like a great-grandfather on the Browning side. Marty isn't sure of the others, but even she can see her resemblance to her mother. The same blue irises, the same dark hair. Her mother's softened now with gray. The same high cheek bones and broad nose, less pronounced now that her mother's skin has started to sink into her neck in yellow-gray folds. Her mother no longer wears the bright greens and pinks that used to compliment her coloring and single her out as a member of the country club set. Now she dresses in dark blues and grays so that sometimes, when she is sitting in her chair like this, but knitting, Marty thinks of her mother as old, working away on the fabric of her life so that she can end it. But even after eight years, it is a shock to see her mother like this. Her father must feel the same way. They must both expect |
