Come Sunday: A Novel Read Free Page B

talking,” I say.
    “But Mommy, she has an owie.”
    “I said, not now,” I reply.
    The toilet flushes and Greg reemerges. “Abbe, just calm down.”
    Which is what does it. The argument is explosive and brief, and Greg picks up Cleo, who begins to cry, and takes her and the decapitated Barbie out to the garden. Upstairs, I slam the bedroom door, take two slugs from the NyQuil bottle, and get into bed. Pulling the covers over my head, I do the arithmetic, but every calculation ends with us further in the red.
     
    IT IS PAST NOON when I wake up, my cheek damp in the pool of drool on my pillow. My eyes are swollen and my head feels thick with fur, but I get up just as the guilt seeps through my feet like the chill ofcold cement. Downstairs, I follow Cleo’s happy tune outside. Greg is sitting on the porch swing watching her take his nappy Russian hat for a ride in the doll’s stroller.
    “Don’t leave that on the ground, Cleo, or Solly will chew it,” I call to her. “Hi,” I croak at Greg. “Hungry?”
    “You just missed Cheerios and ice cream.” He smiles, and in this small exchange we acknowledge each other’s white flags.
    “Mommy!” Cleo rushes over and hugs my knees. “We don’t eat boogers,” she announces.
    “No, we don’t.”
    “We don’t hit,” she adds. “And we don’t say ‘stupid.’ ”
    “That’s right.”
    “It’s not polite.” Her list of commandments is an attempt to cheer me up, and they do, even though I know she will break at least two of them before sundown. She rushes off, pleased with my improved mood.
    “You get your calls made?” I ask.
    “Some of them. And I called Mrs. Scribner to tell her you were sick,” he says.
    I nod my gratitude. “I thought if I just lay down for a few minutes . . .”
    “We’ll get it sorted out,” he assures me.
    “Mrs. Scribner’s hair or the roof?”
    “The roof is probably easier, don’t you think?”
    “You’re terrible,” I say, lifting his hand and putting it on the back of my neck.
    “Thank you, thank you very much.”
     
    HEATING UP last night’s spaghetti for lunch, I pick up the kitchen phone, do the math to calculate California time, dial my brother’s number, and turn on the TV with the volume down low. Oprah is interviewing a sad, white-haired middle-aged man. Members of the audience are crying.
    “Spenser residence,” is my brother’s clipped answer.
    “Oh good, I’m glad I caught you,” I say.
    “Sounds as if you caught something worse than me.”
    “It’s a cold. It’s Greg’s fault—he passed it on to us.”
    “Hey, I know it has been a month since you asked me for those photos, and I apologize for being such a sloth. I haven’t forgotten; I will get up in the attic and look for those boxes this weekend, I promise.” Rhiaan is my last living relative and the self-appointed family archivist. Apart from my grandmother’s farm, about all we have left of our family heritage are those boxes of photos that were once at the bottom of my mother’s closet.
    “Keep your knickers on. That’s not why I’m calling.”
    “So to what, then, do I owe the privilege?” Rhiaan always pretends it is my fault we do not communicate more regularly, but the fact is, when I do call it is often to be told by Cicely that he has requested not to be disturbed.
    “I want to talk about the farm.”
    “At last you want to sell it,” he guesses.
    “Do you always have to know what I’m thinking before I do?”
    “I do—it’s my job.”
    “We need the money,” I confess, picturing him cringing.
    To his credit, he refrains from offering assistance from his own coffers. “I don’t know how much a fifteen-acre farm in Paarl is worth these days. A lot more if it were closer to Cape Town, I suspect. And the exchange rate isn’t exactly in our favor, but I should think it would add up to a couple hundred thousand dollars all told. Would that do it?”
    “It would, but you don’t think the curse—”
    “Abbe!