Dry Spell: A Mercy Watts Short Read Free Page B

ever smelled. I peeked in the oven. Maybe not. She had what looked like pork chops on a cookie sheet. They were all curled up and grey. I didn’t know pork could do that. Other than the curly pork, everything was lovely. There were bowls of home-grown vegetables in the center of the table displayed with flair. All surfaces were scrubbed and polished and smelled of lemon. The feeling was of joy, love, and attentiveness. Ellen’s kitchen made me feel as if I were entering another version of my mother’s, one without baking. I wanted to stay and take deep aching breaths of fragrant air, but I heard Ellen yell out, “Mercy, we’re in the family room.”
    I left the kitchen with regret and irritation. I could’ve been anyone. Ellen refused to lock her doors during the day. Night was no problem, but day, forget it. She simply couldn’t understand how anything bad could happen on a sunny day or any other kind of day. I’d told her horror stories about rapes, kidnappings, not to mention burglaries. Ellen would look at me with her wide-set brown eyes and I would watch the disbelief set in. She couldn’t understand that bad things happen and bad people don’t call to warn you first.  
    I walked into the family room and was attacked by two small blondes.  
    “Auntie Mercy! Auntie Mercy! We went to the zoo today and Jilly cried,” squealed Janine.
    “I didn’t cry. Mommy!” Jilly said with tears starting to well in her eyes.
    “Girls, please,” said Ellen. “Janine don’t torment your sister.”
    The girls quieted down and started their routine. Jilly showed me her stuffed animal collection. Janine showed me her fish and they had the usual fight over which sister would hold the cat up for my inspection. It was Jilly's turn. I sat between the two of them during dinner, answered questions that had no reasonable answers and trying to listen to Jeremy tell about his plan to reconstruct an overpass. No one spoke about the reason for my visit. Both Jeremy and Ellen had purple grooves under their eyes. Jeremy’s eyes darted around the room enough to make me nervous.  
    After dinner, Ellen said she would make coffee and Jeremy would give the girls a bath. She plunged her hands into a sink full of hot soapy water and scrubbed the pots. I got myself a cup of coffee. We stood in silence for a moment listening to the rinse water pour down the drain and Jeremy singing the ABC’s in the living room.  
    “I’m sorry about last night. I can’t believe I went to the hospital,” Ellen said.
    “It’s no problem. Has anything else happened?”
    “No, well, nothing major. She’s mentioned him once today, but nothing about the girl. I’m afraid to ask.”
    “Then I will.”
    “What will you say?” she asked, rinsing her hands and drying them slowly on a dish towel.  
    “Dad said to distract her. Maybe I’ll give her the bath.”
    “What if she won’t talk to you?” The towel was carefully folded into thirds and placed on the back of a chair. Ellen fiddled with it while looking out the door.
    “I think she will. She’s always been my special sweetie.”
    “That’s true,” Ellen said to me with a glimmer of her usual smile.
    I hugged Ellen and then chased Janine and Jilly around the living room before filling the tub with hot, sudsy water. Janine liked her bathwater hot enough to cook lobster. She stripped off her dirty clothes. I put them in the hamper while she climbed into the tub. Steam filled the room with soft, velvety clouds scented with watermelon bubble bath. A few more degrees and it would’ve felt like outside. Janine looked small in that tub, her narrow shoulders nearly covered with bubbles, cheeks rosy with the heat and her fine, blond hair curling into tendrils around her face. She giggled and slipped around the tub talking to her tub toys and me simultaneously. She was getting to be a big girl and yet so delicate that I couldn’t quite fathom that she’d been around for four years. I’d been with