Test Pattern Read Free

yellow shower curtain. Lorena is overwhelmed. She caresses the pink satin quilt on the same twin bed where Lucy and Desi pecked a chaste kiss. Delia sits on the other bed and sighs, “Wouldn’tcha love to live here?”
    “It’s so much better than a house,” agrees Lorena.
    “Much fancier.”
    “Remember how she wore that organza dress and flowers in her hair when she was moving in?”
    “And how they ate by candlelight? And drank Chianti?”
    “Yeah. Parked by a waterfall. In the mountains.”
    The low rumble of the crowd outside the trailer is punctuated by a hand whapping the window of the bedroom where they sit. “Hey!” yells someone. “Get a move on. There’s people waiting out here.”
    “Just hold your horses,” Delia yells back. They take a last, longing look around them before leaving through the trailer’s back door. The line now serpentines the parking lot, weaving in and out between cars.
    “What’d you think you were doing? Moving in?” calls the same voice that accompanied the hand whapping on the trailer’s bedroom window, a voice belonging to a peak-hatted soldier. Delia and Lorena sashay off in a huff, barely sparing a glance at the soldier, who continues haranguing them from his place in line. “Where’s your suitcase?” he calls. “Did ya give ‘em a down payment?”
    “Jeez Louise,” Delia mutters. “Some people.” She opens the door of her car, a brand-new lime-green ‘54 Nash Metropolitan that she bought after her divorce was final, and slides in. “Wanna catch the matinee?”
    “Can’t. I should get groceries, long’s I’m parked here.” Lorena waves at the red-and-yellow A&P sign. “Mize well kill two birds, you know.” She watches Delia’s car squeal away through the parking lot and finds herself wishing that she, too, had a car with that nifty continental kit on the back.
    LORENA HEFTS THE grocery bag in one arm as she hurries from the A&P to her car. Her light jacket feels heavy and claustrophobic. She opens it to the weather, craves the brittle edge of wind on her body. The A&P was overheated, had this funny smell of dried beef blood and insecticide that always gives her a headache. The cold fresh air blows up her skirt and down her blouse. She throws her head back and lets the early May wind lift her hair off her face, away from her neck. A few strands stick there like seaweed.
    The line still snakes through the parking lot to the trailer. Kids chase each other through the cars while mothers yell at them. Cassie didn’t want to come along when Lorena invited her, and Lorena was hurt at Cassie’s response: “What do you want to see an old trailer for?” Lorena just doesn’t know what’s gotten intothat girl lately. She even turned down Lorena’s offer to bake gingerbread men together, one of their favorite mommy-daughter things. Now Cassie doesn’t even call her “Mommy” anymore.
    What happened to the downy baby who curled like a shrimp on Lorena’s shoulder, sucking her thumb and twirling strands of Lorena’s hair between her fingers? When did she crawl down from that safe perch to become this scrawny fresh-mouthed ten-year-old who looks and acts more like Pete each day? Cassie’s long green eyes are the only features left that Lorena can claim. The rest—short straight nose, angular chin, sullen pout of a mouth— belong to Pete.
    There had been a time when Lorena felt that Cassie was her own, an extension of all her senses. When Cassie’s infant mouth would close around a spoonful of strained spinach, Lorena could taste the metallic mush. When Cassie dug her toes into the soft sand of the beach, Lorena’s feet tingled for them both. When Cassie wailed on the first day of school, Lorena cried tears for two.
    What happened? When did her sweet Cassie erupt into this wild creature whose green eyes, once so trusting, now scanned her from beneath thick brown lashes as if Lorena were a villain on one of her TV shows? She only knows that Cassie