Free The French Revolution by Matt Stewart Page A

in high seas, floodlights beaming over whitecaps. Two days later they found Harold’s signature green net shredded by the sea.
    The strike to her chest, her husband stolen away—part of her forever, a tattoo around a bullet hole. April 1, 1979, April Fool’s Day, no joke.
    Fanny wore the same clothing, ate the same food, lived in the same house, received the same amount of Social Security each month. Every election cycle she voted for the same presidential candidate, though Gerry Ford had been out of contention for some time. She drove the same Mustang convertible with the same expired registration, refusing to submit to a newfangled smog test. She hadn’t approved when Esmerelda enrolled in the culinary academy, or landed the gig prepping pastries at the yuppie haven Incognito, or put on weight like a bear headed for hibernation, or started her worker drone job at the CopySmart flagship store, or showed up with her noisy pups and shipped out to Jasper’s Presidio apartment. But after a few months Esmerelda’s smell had wondrously evaporated along with her out-of-place clothing, modern music, perplexing street slang,
and ineffective weight-management devices. Heavy ocean air and daughterless simplicity seeped into the house, cigarettes and gin propping Fanny aloft.
    In the summer of 1994, she began receiving letters in Esmerelda’s handwriting folded over photographs of brown children, a cute girl and a chubby boy smiling and scowling, both with Harold’s bean-shaped eyes. In early August she received a phone call inviting her to supper at the Cliff House, and though she thought she knew better, when Esmerelda reported that her kids were getting into fishing, dropping poles at Lake Merced on weekends and digging for their own night crawlers before school, curiosity got the better of her. Esmerelda met her at the restaurant with a trembling hug and, after confirming Fanny had brought her checkbook, began narrating an eight-course eating extravaganza with tales of her missing husband, her monstrous credit balance, her years-overstayed guest status, the depravity of Little Stockholm hedonism. Her jaw-dropping grocery bill. The final decision of the city’s eviction board, notice served by the sheriff’s department. And the logical point that there were unused bedrooms in Fanny’s house.
    “I do not think so, dear,” Fanny said, cooling her after-dinner tea with a nip of gin from her purse. “You are a big girl; you can take care of yourself.”
    Esmerelda softly gargled her water. She had forgotten her mother’s snooty refusal to use contractions in speech, as if efficient diction was a mark of baseness.
    “Ma, I need help.” Slow, measured tea bag dips. “I do not think it would be a good decision. I do not like changes to my household, and the way things are suit me fine. Your tornado children would create a tremendous ruckus, and why should I put up with it? Besides, you left me in the first place. So.”
    Esmerelda dug her nails into her knees and waited for the urge to throw her silverware at her mother’s face to peter out. Eventually: “I didn’t want things to come to this, Ma. I know what you’ve been through, and believe me, I miss Dad too. But I gotta set
things straight. First, I didn’t leave home because I wanted to. I tried to bring the tots home, but you wouldn’t have them—”
    Fanny loudly tore open a sugar packet with her teeth and dumped it into her tea.
    “—truth is, you’re my only family. I’m in a bad place: my hubby up and vanished; my kids growing up in Orgyville, USA; work all day and kids all night and still not enough cash to cover expenses. And the sheriff’s going to forcibly remove us tomorrow. So, Ma. Please. Let us stay with you.”
    Lumps of perspiration lazed on Esmerelda’s brow. Fanny was perplexed—she couldn’t remember the last time Esmerelda had said “please”—and somewhat swayed, her heart the tiniest bit thawed.
    “You understand, Esmerelda, I am