Rooms Read Free Page B

herself.
    “Well, of course there’s nowhere to eat around here,” Minna is saying. “It’s a miracle I even have cell-phone reception.”
    In the kitchen, Caroline removes her coat—an enormous fur coat, despite the fact that it is unseasonably warm. She did get fat; it’s true. Her beauty is still there, but with age it has softened, blurred, and become faintly ridiculous, like the kind of amateur watercolor you might see in an office building.
    “ And she’s drunk.” Sandra gets still, and very alert. “Drunk as a whore on Sunday. Do you smell it?”
    “No.” I smell perfume, and mildew, and Trenton’s bathroom, which I am trying hard not to smell.
    “Vodka,” Sandra says, the way a music lover might say Bach . “I’d swear to it. Absolut. No, no. Stoli, with just a splash of tonic . . . ”
    When Sandra was alive, she would drink anything she could get her hands on. Wine or beer when there were guests—she would top off her glass with bottles stashed behind curtains, or in the shower, so no one would know she was drinking more than double their amount—and vodka when she was alone. But she wasn’t picky. Whiskey, gin, and even—after a brief period of sobriety, when she had cleaned her entire house of liquor—rubbing alcohol.
    It’s only now that she has developed a palate.
    “And lime,” she says. “Definitely lime.”
    If only it could have been anyone else but Sandra . . . that nice, quiet girl from down the road, whom Maggie used to be so fond of. Or Sammy, the butcher—he always had interesting things to say, and he was polite, even to the black customers. Even Anne Collins, who was constantly going on about her husband’s finances and bragging about the new coats she would buy, would have been preferable.
    Trenton flushes. Water runs; pipes shudder; the system pulses. Rhythm and flow; ingestion, excretion. Input, output. These are laws of the universe.
    He pounds down the central staircase—(the feeling of a doctor knocking on a kneecap, testing for reflexes; painless and unsettling)—and slouches against the kitchen door frame.
    “Trenton!” Caroline says, extending her arms to him, although he makes no move to go toward her and she stays where she is. “How was your drive?”
    “What happened to you?” he responds.
    “What do you mean?” Caroline’s voice is the same as it always was—high, shot through with nervous laughter, as though someone has just told a joke whose punch line she hasn’t completely understood.
    “I mean you left just after us.” Trenton goes to the Spider and slumps into a chair, tilting his head back to lean against the dark stone walls of the fireplace. He seems exhausted by the energy required to cross the room.
    “Traffic,” Caroline replies shortly. “Terrible traffic.”
    “Bullshit,” Sandra says.
    “Sandra, please.” I’ve never been able to abide her mouth; she’s worse than Ed was.
    “It’s bullshit. She was in a bar having a tall one. Ten to one. I’ll bet you.”
    “It was smooth sailing for us,” Trenton says neutrally. He watches his mother through half-narrowed eyes. She moves around the kitchen, picking things up and replacing them: an empty vase, whose glass is crusted with a thin film of brown; a balled-up napkin; a bottle of vitamins, cap removed. Even though she’s heavy now, she still manages to give the impression of a moth: fluttering and fragile.
    “How strange,” she says. “There must have been an accident. It was a parking lot on I-80.”
    “You made it,” Minna says. She, too, has come downstairs. Her bra and the contours of her spine are visible through her T-shirt.
    Caroline looks from Minna to Trenton. Her voice turns shriller. “Well, of course I made it. For God’s sake. Anyone would think I had . . . ” She turns to Minna. “And you were probably speeding the whole way.”
    “Did you see it?” Trenton asks.
    “Did I see what ?” Caroline snaps.
    “The accident,” he says. The more