Dreamsleeves

Dreamsleeves Read Free

Book: Dreamsleeves Read Free
Author: Coleen Murtagh Paratore
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suitcase is there on the floor, her fancy coat and hat on the hook. She’s holding a prayer card.
    â€œCome on in, angel,” she says. “Just saying a novena.” She looks at the clock. “Sit down. We’ve got time for tea.”
    There is always time for tea. Tea is my nana’s answer to everything — a blizzard, a heat wave, the chicken pox, all ailments of the mind and body and heart.

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream …
    â€” S HAKESPEARE
    N ana and I sit at her small, round kitchen table, looking out the window at the lilac bushes, which have now lost all their sweet-smelling purple buds.
    Nana looks worried, scared even, her fingers fidgeting around her teacup. I know she’s afraid of flying. She’s never been on a plane before.
    Nana rode a huge ocean liner across the Atlantic Ocean from Ireland all by herself when she was just sixteen, but ever since then her favorite vehicle is the city bus. Nana doesn’t even like riding in my dad’s car. She’s always telling him to “slow down, Roe!”
    And he does. My father listens when Nana talks. It’s almost like he’s still a boy, not wanting to make his mommy mad. He loves her so much.
    â€œDon’t worry, Nana,” I say. “I read once that people are safer riding a jet plane than they are riding in a car in their own neighborhood.”
    â€œOh, no,” Nana says, shaking her head vehemently, her lips pursed, like this is an absurd thing for me to say. “I’m not worried at all, dear.” She refills my cup and then hers.
    I know she’s faking. That’s the way Nana deals with things that trouble her. She makes believe they don’t exist, or she says novenas.
    Novenas are these really long prayers Catholics say. Nana’s got a novena for everything — somebody’s sick, somebody’s dying, somebody lost their keys, somebody needs a wish granted.
    I wonder what Nana wishes for? She never, ever says. We don’t have those kinds of conversations. We talk about whether the tea is steeped enough, or does the soup needs salt, or if we think it will rain.
    â€œWhen are you coming back?” I ask.
    â€œBitsy wants me to stay until Labor Day, but I told her I need to be home by the third week in August.” Nana sets her cup down and winks at me.
    Nana loves winking. She winks more than Santa Claus.
    â€œWe have a date, don’t we?” Nana says, walking to the wall calendar and flipping up the pages. “August twenty-first — Aislinn. Got it circled right here.”
    â€œYes!” I say, smiling, relieved that she didn’t forget. Nana and I have an annual date — the third Saturday of August. It’s a tradition.
    Ever since I started kindergarten, Nana and I take the bus uptown and we go to Cooper’s Shoe Store and Nana buys me whichever pair I choose — no matter the cost — and that’s very generous of her because I know she isn’t rich. Nana says shoes are a person’s most important apparel purchase. “You can sew a patch on a pocket or let the hem out on a skirt, but a girl should start a new school year in shoes she’s proud of.”
    After we get the shoes (we never buy anything besides the shoes) we go to a restaurant for lunch — Fatone’s or Manory’s or the Puritan — and we get a booth and take our time looking over the menu and placing our orders (we’re never in a rush; it’s such a good feeling), and we generally order tuna fish sandwiches with potato chips and extra pickles and we always, always order pie for dessert, with tea, of course.
    Sometimes when we’re having our annual back-to-school lunch, my new shoes in a box on the seat beside me, and lots of times when I’m sitting here across the table from Nana, here in her kitchen, sometimes I think, Go ahead, A, do it…. Ask Nana for help. Tell Nana how bad it’s getting. How scared

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