The Mother Garden Read Free Page A

what’s the deal with Gracie?” I ask. My mother looks up at me, surprised. Her eyebrows are thin from the drugs and when she raises them, they get lost in the flesh of her forehead.
    â€œShe’s a lovely girl,” my mother says. “She grew up in Wisconsin. Her father’s an orthodontist.”
    â€œSo how’d she wind up here?” I ask.
    My mother shrugs. “Switch the tubes for me.” And in a fast pull-strap motion, she’s got the mask secured. The little motor in the gray box begins to sing. I go to the compressor and pull the tubing in.

    The house is silent. My grandmother’s oil paintings of forests and sunsets line the stairwell to my bedroom.
    â€œOh!” says Gracie, putting down the porcelain box that sits by my bed. “I didn’t hear you.”
    She looks guilty. My dad’s right. We’ll turn around to get the milk out of the fridge and off she’ll go with the checkbooks, the credit cards, my mother’s wedding ring.
    â€œI was looking for my bracelet,” she says.
    â€œWell. It’s not here,” I say. “Maybe check the bathroom.”
    â€œYeah, good idea.” Gracie fidgets and begins to smooth the bedspread with the side of her hand. When she finishes that, she studies her fingers as if a secret scroll might be hidden in her nail bed. “Your mom’s great,” she says. “Such a fighter.”
    â€œThanks,” I say.
    â€œMy mom’s dead,” she says. Her eyes transform, full of tears.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say, but it comes out made of rocks. She’s wearing my earrings.
    Gracie follows my gaze. Her hands fly to her ears.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she says, wincing. “I was just trying them on—they’re very pretty.”
    â€œHard to resist,” I say. “Maybe it’s not a good idea for you to stay here. Can we get you a room in town for the night?”
    Gracie crumples sideways onto the bed. She’s a real faucet now, getting mascara on my pale yellow pillows. I struggle to think of what words to toss in the silence that will open up between us, but I’m saved when she begins an energetic round of sobs. She sounds like a goose.
    I feel my body go still. I don’t care about Gracie, why she’s here, what she wants. And I don’t care about her mother. “How’d she die?” I ask. Gracie struggles to calm. She swipes at her nose and takes a big, slobbery breath. “She drowned,” she says. “She left my father in Madison and was living in some women’s colony near Junction City and something happened, I guess she went skinny-dipping in the river.” She reaches over for a tissue—all our rooms have boxes of tissues now. Aside from a little snot and a smear of black beneath her eyes, she still looks good, like she’s made out of velvet or suede, not skin. The salt from her tears makes her eyes an even more outlandish shade of green.
    â€œThey never found the body?” I ask. This is one of my fantasies, that we’ll wake up one day and my mother will have vanished. There’ll be no body, no clues. And instead of being nowhere, she’ll be everywhere, in everything.
    â€œNo, it washed up downriver near a farm,” Gracie says. “The police called us.”
    Everyone dies, I’m tempted to tell her. It’s all part of life’s mysterious cycle. She takes another tissue.
    â€œThere’s whiskey upstairs,” I tell her.
    Both of us walk slowly, our bare feet soft on the wood. I pour two shots in the tall glasses.
    â€œIce?” I ask.
    â€œNo, neat,” she says, holding out her hand.
    I pluck the list of donation possibilities from beneath the fruit bowl, where it seems to have landed permanently, gathering smudges and grease stains. All over the margins, my father’s boxy writing lists numbers, organizations, people who’d help administer grants. I fold it in