Anywhere But Here Read Free Page B

other. My mother said we were just moving, from Bay City, Wisconsin, and that she was looking forward to the warm air.
    “I couldn’t stand another winter.” She rolled down her window and glanced outside. “I love Scottsdale, the dryness.”
    Gail Letterfine was very tan with light gray hair, bright clothes and turquoise Indian jewelry. “You’re going to love this house, it’sabsolutely cream of the crop. I haven’t had anything like this to show for over a year.”
    She drove us to the top of a hill. The land was brown, dirt. There were no lawns. I just sat in the backseat, not saying anything. I wished I had
Gone With the Wind
. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, in case I contradicted my mother. I could tell she was lying, but I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t know why. She liked me to talk, around strangers, like a kid. But I was mad, sort of. So I just stared out the window.
    Gail Letterfine parked the Mustang on the pebbled lot near a fountain. Pennies overlapped and glittered on the bottom. Just from where we were, I could tell this was something we’d never seen before. We didn’t have houses like this in Bay City. A maid opened the door, a woman I knew was a maid from her black short dress and white apron. We’d never seen a maid before, in person, at least I hadn’t, I didn’t know anymore about my mother. When we got along, it seemed we knew everything about each other. But now, I felt like my mother glossed over things. She knew how nervous I could be.
    The maid went to get someone else. Gail Letterfine opened a door and it was a closet. “Coat closet,” she said, loudly, as if it were her own house.
    The living room was huge, with red clay tile floors and high ceilings. There were long windows on two walls and you could see outside, down the hill. There was no furniture except a black grand piano and chairs against the walls.
    The woman of the house came to meet us. Considering where she lived, she looked like an ordinary person. She had plain brown permanented hair and a nice face. She was wearing a gray dress and stockings.
    Gail Letterfine introduced her and the woman took us through her house. Out windows, we saw the backyard, brown and dry, with an oval turquoise swimming pool. Clay pots of strawberry plants stood with thick, heavy berries hanging down over their rims. Every time we entered a room, the woman stood in the doorway while Gail Letterfine pointed out features. In the kitchen, Gail opened every cupboard, where we saw canned soupand Jell-O mixes just like in my grandmother’s house. Gail went on about the sink, the refrigerator and the stove. Then she started in on the plumbing. From the way my mother shifted, you could tell she was less than interested.
    “What about your appointments?” My mother cupped her hand around a painted Mexican candleholder on the kitchen table. “Are they for sale, too? Because they all go so well, they’re what
make
the house.”
    I wondered where she’d learned that word. The woman shook her head. “No, I’m sorry.” My mother liked the woman who lived here, her quietness. There was something tough in Gail Letterfine. With her espadrille, she was now pointing to the molding around the kitchen floor. My mother would rather have talked to the woman in the gray dress. Perhaps that’s why we’d come here, because my mother missed her friends.
    The bedrooms and bathrooms were regular-sized.
    “Our daughter’s room,” the woman said, in the last doorway on the hall. “She’s gone off to college.”
    My mother nudged me, “This would be yours.” We wandered into the adjoining bathroom, which had a vanity and a makeup mirror. Starfish and shells cluttered the tile rim of the sunken tub. My mother frowned at me, “Not bad.”
    They walked back down the hallway to the dining room. The woman in the gray dress had, quietly, offered them tea, and my mother answered quick and loud, “I’d love some.”
    I stayed in the room. Outside, water slapped