Choke Read Free Page B

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    “Unca Huey pinched Mommy?” Drew squealed, glee behind her sparkling green eyes.
    “Drew,” said Immy, trying to sound as authoritative as her mother always did, “go to your room and bring me your Fuzzy Bear.”
    “Why?”
    Hortense took over. “Do it, Drew. Now.” There, that authoritative sound. Why did her own voice have to be so high-pitched?
    “OK, Geemaw.” Drew scooted down the hallway, her bright chestnut curls bouncing behind her.
    “I’m waiting.” Hortense drummed her fingers against her ample thigh.
    A knock on the front door interrupted them.
    Saved by the bell. Or the knock, since we don’t have an operating doorbell.
    Hortense aimed her annoyance at the door and nodded for Immy to get it.
    Immy jumped up gladly . I hope it’s a SWAT team that picked the wrong house to search for a meth lab. That might, just might, make Mother forget about this.
    It was almost as good. In the doorway stood a small man, dwarfed by a huge white box. He thrust it toward Immy. A delivery van from a Wymee Falls florist idled on the front yard grass.
    “For Mrs. Duckworthy,” he announced.
    “I’m Mrs. Duckworthy.” Hortense pushed past her daughter and grabbed the box. She tore it open, and it revealed a mound of lush, de-thorned red roses.
    “Wow,” breathed Immy. “How many are there?”
    “Twenty-four,” answered the little delivery man with pride.
    Drew ran into the room carrying a Barbie doll. “Drew,” said Immy, “I thought I told you to get Fuzzy Bear.”
    “Don’t like Fuzzy Bear. Like Barbie.”
    Immy shuddered. She didn’t want to raise a Barbie-loving daughter. That doll sent all the wrong messages to children, for heaven’s sake. She reached to take the doll, but Drew snatched it back, gave an impish grin, and ran down the short hallway to the bedroom that mother and daughter shared.
    “Imogene, compensate the man.” Hortense carried the flowers into the kitchen. Immy found a dollar in her purse and reluctantly parted with it. There weren’t that many more where it came from. She hoped Uncle Huey would pay her soon for the shifts she had worked before she quit.
    She wandered into the kitchen. Her mother was on her knees, rummaging under the sink. Hortense emerged triumphant with her one and only cut glass vase. Immy gave her mother a hand up and helped her trim the stems. The blossoms looked crowded in the vase, but Hortense said she didn’t want to put them in plastic.
    “Who are they from?” asked Immy, although she already knew. Clem Quigley, the cook at Huey’s Hash, was the only person who regularly sent Hortense flowers.
    Hortense opened the florist’s square envelope and held the card to her bosom, smiling. “Such a silly, old fool,” she said, but she kept smiling.
    The subjects of bottom pinching and lying to your mother didn’t come up again that night.
    The next morning, as Immy drove the family behemoth, an ancient Dodge van of bilious green, into Wymee Falls, she worried that her lies were piling up a little too tall, like tumbleweed stacked up against a fence by the wind.
    She had told her mother she was going to the larger town to look for work in some restaurants, which wasn’t too much of a lie. She was looking for work, but not waiting tables. That was a dead end for her.
    Why hadn’t she shown her mother the business cards she’d picked up yesterday? Maybe she should have. No, she argued, she’d better not. If she did, her mother would completely dismiss her desire to open her own business, she knew she would.
    She knew the litany by heart, having heard it often enough. Little Immy couldn’t do anything on her own. The family took care of her. Look how she had become an unwed mother at eighteen. She hadn’t graduated from high school with honors and become a librarian like her brilliant mother.
    But she had graduated, in spite of being pregnant when she crossed the stage. She wasn’t stupid, and she would prove it. She did not have to be taken