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Show Woodworth/212 together- What she wants to give her mother is a gift. She understands. It doesn't matter what Ruth does or feels. It's not her concern any more. They are free of each other. Just the way Jake is free now, and Kegan is free. She tries to think of what it is that will make her mother understand that the bond is broken, she has cut it. Ruth doesn't need to cut it, too. It only took one slice. "I was serious, really," she says. Ruth's breath fills the room like wheezing in a hospital room. "I used to do that to my mother, too," Ruth says. Her voice is far-off. Judgeher all the time. You never know what it's really like." "I'm not judging you." "I guess you don't think I've been a very good mother to you all, do you?" Ruth asks. "Of course you have." She re-considers. "It doesn't really matter, does it? I mean, we were all going to turn out the way we turned out anyway." Ruth looks at her, her face gray-white, her lips slack. She looks as if she has had cotton packed loosely under her skin. "So it doesn't really matter what I did?" "Well no, not really." "Thank you." Her mother's voice cracks, screeches like fingernails on a chalk board. "I've spent the last twenty-six years or so being a mother, and now you're telling me that nothing would have been different if I had spent all that time...raising corn instead of children." The co&ersation is thick, she feels as if she's trying to breath through Saran Wrap, with just one tiny hole. If she breathes'too hard, the hole will be sucked into the folds |