Mrs. Kimble Read Free Page B

face?”
    Birdie peered at her reflection in the toaster. Her eyes seemed too far apart, her face round and flat as a dinner plate. There were splotches of bright blue around the eyes and mouth. She rubbed her face with sweaty fingers. Her hands were spotted blue, as with some rare disease.
    “It must be this ink pen.” She got to her feet and tossed the pen in the trash. She noticed then that Jody wore nothing but a diaper, and was suddenly ashamed. What kind of mother was she, letting her child run around the house half naked? What if someone should come to the door? What if—she tried to stop the thought, but couldn’t—he should come back?
    “Let’s get some clothes on you.” She drained her glass and passed through the living room. Charlie had come back and lay sprawled before the television. The children’s room was a true disaster: toys scattered across the floor, tiny socks and underpants, small muddy footprints on the worn yellow carpet. She found Jody a clean sundress and ran a comb through her soft curly hair. She would take her children to the store, where she would locate the items on her list. People did this every day.
    Birdie went to the dresser in her bedroom and took the envelopefrom the bottom drawer. Inside were four twenty-dollar bills, the last of the money her husband had left. She folded one of the bills and tucked it into her pocket.
    “Charlie,” she called. “Turn off the television. We’re going to the store.”
     
    T HE CAR was sweltering inside. Jody wailed when Birdie placed her on the black vinyl seat.
    “Hot!” she cried.
    “I know, button,” said Birdie. Sweat bubbled up from her scalp and trickled down her forehead; she swiped it away with the back of her wrist. She felt a raging thirst. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d driven the car. Weeks? Months? The hood stretched eternally in front of her. She felt like the captain of a large ship. Ahoy, she thought, turning the key in the ignition.
    Nothing happened.
    “It’s just been setting awhile,” she said to Charlie’s serious eyes in the rearview mirror, his father’s eyes watching her. She pumped the gas pedal a few times and turned the key again. The engine sputtered, but wouldn’t turn over.
    “Goodness,” said Birdie.
    “Why won’t it go?” said Charlie.
    “Child, I don’t know.” It was not a complicated operation, starting a car. She couldn’t imagine what she’d done wrong. Again she turned the key and pumped the gas. From somewhere in the back of her head, she heard her husband’s voice: Don’t flood the engine. But it was too late; the car refused to start.
    They climbed out of the car. Birdie noticed two bags of garbagewaiting at the curb. For the second week in a row, the trash collector had forgotten her house.
    “We’ll walk to Beckwith’s,” she said. “Let me go get my handcart.”
    She left the children sitting on the stoop. Inside, she took the half bottle of wine from the refrigerator and drained it in several gulps. She located the handcart in the kitchen closet and wheeled it onto the porch.
     
    B ECKWITH’S WAS EMPTY that afternoon. The front door was propped open. A ceiling fan stirred up a limp breeze, the sweet dirty smell of baked goods and cigar smoke.
    “Miz Kimble.” Beckwith nodded from behind the counter. He was a stooped, indoorsy man, his skin and hair and eyes the same shade of gray, as if he’d been dipped in ash.
    “Good morning,” said Birdie. She’d already rehearsed it in her mind, how she’d go straight to the back of the store where the bottles of wine were arranged on a dusty shelf. She pretended to deliberate for a moment, then placed four bottles in the basket of the handcart.
    “Having a party, ma’am?” said Beckwith.
    Birdie kept her back to him.
    “Why, yes,” she said vaguely. She hated this man: his dirty little store, his tiny eyes that followed a person around the room. He was a gossip and so was his wife, a fat, slow-witted