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s-o-u-l.
She watched a police car pull into the parking lot. Two policemen got out and
the flashing lights stayed on, the edge of them zinging blue through the window,
across the sink and the Maalox spoon. There had probably been a fight—a lot of
nights there were fights in the bar. Rebecca, standing at the window, felt a tiny
smile inside her getting larger—how delicious it would be: that one moment of
perfect joy, propped up and righteous with booze, to let that first punch fly.
“Feel this,” said David, flexing his muscle. “Really.”
Rebecca leaned over her cereal bowl and touched his arm. It was like touching
frozen earth. “That’s amazing,” she said. “That really is.”
David stood and looked at himself in the toaster. He flexed both arms
together, like a boxer showing off before a crowd. Then he turned side-to and
looked at himself that way. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Not bad.”
The only mirror Rebecca’s father had in their house was the one that hung
over the bathroom sink. If she wasn’t brushing her teeth or washing her face, she
wasn’t supposed to be near that mirror; vanity was a sin. “Your mother ran away
from one cult just to join another,” her aunt Katherine had said. “For God’s sake,
no Congregationalist lives like this.” Except Rebecca did. She wished her aunt
would stop it, just go away and stop saying those things. “Do you want to come
live with us?” her aunt asked her once, and Rebecca shook her head. She didn’t
want to mention the soul custody. Besides, her Aunt Katherine made her
anxious, the same way her math teacher, Mrs. Kitteridge, did. Mrs. Kitteridge
would look at her hard sometimes, when the class was supposed to be working.
Once she had said to Rebecca in the hallway, “If you ever want to talk to me
about anything, you can.”
Rebecca hadn’t answered, had just moved past her with her books.
“All right, I’m out of here,” David said, zipping his workout bag closed. “You
got the number for the dental assisant?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said.
“Good luck, Bicka-Beck,” said David. He went to the refrigerator and drank
from the orange juice carton. Then he picked up the keys and kissed her
goodbye. “Remember,” he said. “Be confident, and don’t talk too much.”
“Right, got it,” Rebecca said, nodding. “Goodbye.” She sat at the table with
the dirty cereal bowls in front of her, and thought about her urge to talk. It had
come over her soon after her father died, and it had not gone away. It was a
physical thing, really; she wanted to give it up the way people gave up smoking.
Her father’d had a rule—no talking at the table. It was a strange rule, when
you thought about it, because there had been only the two of them sitting in the
little dining room of the rectory each night. It could be that her father was tired
at the end of his day after visiting the sick and the dying—it was a small town,
but there was usually someone sick, and quite frequently someone dying—and
he wanted it quiet so that he could rest. At any rate, they had sat there night after
night, the only sounds being silverware touching a plate, or a water glass being
put back on the table, and the soft, too-intimate sounds of their chewing.
Sometimes Rebecca would look up and see how her father had a piece of food
caught on his chin, and she wouldn’t be able to swallow, she’d feel such a
sudden love for him. But other times, especially as she got older, she was glad to
see all the butter he used. It was his love for butter she was counting on, hoping
that would do him in.
She stood now and washed out the cereal bowls. Then she wiped the counter
and straightened the chairs. A pinprick of heat started up in her stomach, so she
got the Maalox bottle and the Maalox spoon, and as she was shaking the bottle,
she got an image of David leaning toward her, reminding her not to talk too
much, and it came to her then that of course the large would be too big.
“No problem,” the woman said. “I’ll just check and see if the order’s gone
out.”
Even scraping with her fingernail, there was a layer of dried Maalox that
wouldn’t come off the spoon. Rebecca put the spoon back onto the counter. “I
thought I probably wouldn’t get the same person again,” she said. “Wow. Or
maybe you’re just a small outfit.” There was no answer. “I mean, being a small
outfit’s just fine,” said Rebecca, ripping two pages of the story out of the
magazine. There was still no answer, and finally Rebecca understood she’d been
put on hold. She watched the pages go up in flames—the section where the wife
just left. The flame was higher than the sink. A thrill of anxiety rose in Rebecca;
she waited—her hands on the faucet—but the flame dipped down.
“Never mind,” the woman said, back on the phone. “The order’s already gone
out. Just send it back if it’s too big, and we’ll send out a medium. Tell me, how’s
your headache today?”
“You
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