Free Lucky in the Corner by Carol Anshaw Page B

stretch of relationship where each of them thought they were going to be a huge agent of change for the other.
    “Is it time for Fern’s dinner?” Jeanne asks.
    “Yes. She’s being very awful,” Nora says. “Come down and protect me.” In the hallway, she adds, “I don’t deserve this. All the literature says you replicate your own parents’ limitations. But I haven’t. My mother was so all over me all the time. I was determined to give Fern room to grow, some private space to hold her secrets. Which I continue to do. I’ve never, for instance, if you’ve noticed, so much as alluded, not once, to the fucking tattoo.”
    On the stairs, Jeanne tugs at the back of Nora’s tank top, makes her stop and turn around, kisses the side of her mouth.
    “I think Fern is in a place now that is a little dark. You know, patting her hand around on the wall to find the switch to turn on the light. And I think soon she will find it, but also that she needs to be alone in her darkness until she does. I think this is what she is saying to you, what you perceive as anger or indifference.”
    “I know, but—” Nora starts, but Jeanne pats her butt to get her going down the steps, and says:
    “Patience.”
     
    They move out to the backyard for the dinner; they eat at two long folding tables pushed together to make a square. These tables are layered with an assortment of Nora’s vintage tablecloths —pink and blue, a green and yellow map of the States, a holly-patterned Christmas cloth—set with brightly colored Mexican plates. The rains have revived the garden, loosened the deepest fragrances from the flowers, the earth itself, the basil and the tomatoes—especially the tomatoes. Fern’s boom box sits on the sill of her bedroom, facing out. Otis Redding’s greatest hits slip through the window screen.
    The big bowl of pasta rests in the center of the table, next to it a platter of Caprese salad with fat slices of tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and a confetti of chopped basil leaves. Tracy’s mother’s many-grain bread sits, sliced, on a board. The homemade cheese, which they all know too well from long acquaintance, remains in the kitchen, on the counter next to the sink, safely confined to its plastic tub. The bayberry maple candles have made it onto the table, but no one has made a move to light them.
    It’s a mystery where Fern comes by her talent for cooking; she was raised on spaghetti sauce from jars, rôtisserie chickens from the supermarket. And then, when she was early into her teens, she started bringing home cookbooks. Like a child from some backwoods shack without so much as a radio, coming upon a grand piano and teaching herself to play.
    “We are so lucky to have you,” Jeanne tells her, as plates are being passed around, and Fern smiles and lowers her head and closes her eyes, made both happy and shy by the compliment.
    Nora wonders why she herself couldn’t have come up with this little bit of praise and elicited this particularly sweet smile from Fern. But of course, if Nora had been offering the compliment, it wouldn’t have been received in this easy way. Fern would have been searching for some hidden jab, or pretending to take it as though it had been delivered sarcastically, bravely trying not to appear wounded.
    “I’m going to have to switch to working lunch at the Haus,” Harold tells them all once they’ve begun eating. “I have a part. A new theater company, up on Clark. They’re doing some
very
interesting things.”
    “Is it big?” Fern says. “The part?”
    “Well, it’s ridiculous in a way. You could say it’s a large part because I am onstage through the entire play. But I don’t have any lines because the fact is, I am deceased. The whole thing is set at a wake and I’m laid out in the casket. I was a very complicated person when I was alive and all the other characters have to sort out their feelings about me.”
    At first, no one finds anything to say to Harold’s