Love Me Tender Read Free Page B

into her spinach, I wondered why I used to think all my problems would be over once I grew up.
    Kerrie said, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
    I said, “Don't stir your food together. It looks disgusting, like mashed sweet peas.”
    “What's disgusting about that?”
    “Mel will be buying baby food pretty soon,” I said. “You'll have a chance to find out.”
    While Mel watched TV, on and on, she ignored us entirely. We could be in the same room, that was okay; we could watch the movie, okay too. But we couldn't ask her for anything. We couldn't touch her, even. She flicked us off like houseflies.
    Kerrie brought out the deck of cards. “Play with us, Mel,” I said. “We need three for Hearts.”
    “I just don't have the energy,” she said. I hated to hear her say that, because it made me feel like I sort of didn't have the energy either.
    “Then it's War,” I said to Kerrie, who didn't look especially disappointed. She wins at War more often than at Hearts, sad to say.
    A little before midnight, Mel said, “Pop up some corn, Elvira, why don't you?”
    “Because I'm tired, that's why.”
    Like someone lying on her deathbed, Mel said, “I have a craving for popcorn,” and I acted like I didn't hear her. After about twenty minutes, she scraped up enough energy to pop corn and gave us, Kerrie and me, each a cereal bowl full. Mel filled a big wooden salad bowl for herself.
    There was something horrible about not being given a fair share. Kerrie and I gobbled as if we were in a race to the finish. Then Kerrie said, “I want more,” and reached to scoop some out of the salad bowl.
    “Get Elvira to make you some,” Mel said, pushing my sister's hand away.
    I hated Mel so much right then, burning tears came to my eyes. “I won't either. It's too much trouble to go to.” Then I thought of how to get a rise out of her. Mel didn't trust nonstick coatings, pressure cookers, toaster ovens, and most of all, microwave ovens.
    I said, “If we had a microwave, Kerrie could do her own. I don't see why we can't even have a microwave.” Normally, this would be the start of the big lecture on how early microwave users cooked their very bones, reaching in and out of those invisible rays.
    Normally, Mel would tell us microwave doors are not even solid but are a grid of pinholes the rays can shoot through, starting cancers in the breasts and bellies of women who are standing impatiently in front of them, tap-ping their French-painted toes.
    These were not normal times. Mel said, “I'll think about it.”
    By midnight, Mel was watching a movie about a lonely housewife who follows some woman she read about in the personal ads until she ends up living the other woman's life. It might've been scary to think Mel felt like following somebody into another life, but the way she had folded herself into the recliner, I figured she was going to be there the rest of her life.
    The rest of mine.
    We were all up way past my bratty sister's bedtime. When Kerrie roused herself enough to notice Mel had eaten the last of the chocolate chip cookies, she threw her-self onto the floor in a tantrum, kicking one foot so her body hitched around and around like a balky carousel.
    This was something she had outgrown once. When she was little, the only way to deal with her was to pick her up off the floor at the supermarket or the toy store and carry her out to the car, kicking and screaming. I didn't have to be the momma to know that we had to nip this silliness in the bud.
    But Mel and Daddy had made up their minds to ignore her babyish behavior, which meant I had to live with it too.
    Mel said, “Take care of your sister.”
    I went to bed with a Save the Earth chocolate bar and a nice thick book. I played an old concert tape from Daddy's stash. The applause after every song just made me feel like, somewhere in the world, people were having a good time.
    About an hour later, my sister climbed into my bed and curled up like a cat against