Free Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige by Kathleen Gilles Seidel Page B

tie a tie just like his father could. He now considered Zack his very dear friend, something that clearly made Zack uncomfortable.
    That was one problem with the private schools Zack had attended. He had never been in classes with “mainstreamed” students—kids with various kinds of disabilities who joined the traditional classes for a few hours a day. The benefits to the mainstreamed kids probably had to be assessed case by case, but getting to know their part-time classmates as individuals broadened the outlook of the so-called normal students.
    But Zack hadn’t had that experience. To him, Finney, sweet, earnestly well-behaved little Finney, was unpredictable and unknowable. I watched unhappily as Zack drew away from the boy, leaving my father, as we waited for the girls, to carry the conversation about knotting ties.
    A few minutes later, Cami floated down in a sleeveless, pale rose satin dress that drifted and clung to her in a Jean Harlow way. She looked spectacular. Dad met her at the bottom of the stairs. He took her left hand, the one with Mother’s ring, and tilted it toward the light. He looked down at the ring for a moment, then lifted her hand to kiss the back of her palm. “Jeremy’s grandmother said that she did everything with her left hand for the first month she had that ring.”
    “I did too,” Cami said. “Jeremy didn’t tell me at first that it was her ring in case I didn’t like it, but I loved it right away.”
    “She did, too.”
    Dad’s face was soft. He was thinking about Mother. I couldn’t stand to. Everything would have been so much better if she had been here.
    We were now all waiting for Annie.
    Jeremy was getting tense.
    “Annie is late. Very late,” Finney said. “It makes Mommy mad.”
    Cami had already been upstairs once. “I’d go again, but when I try to rush her, it just gets worse.”
    Jeremy looked at his watch again. Finally he looked at me. “Mom, could you do something?”
    It had been a long time since he’d asked me for help. Sometimes I felt as if he’d drunk his dad’s Kool-Aid and thought of me as this huge screwup. I could endure that from Mike, but not from one of the boys.
    I went upstairs. The two sisters had decided that Jeremy should move into the second twin bed in Dad’s room, and Annie could share the double bed with Cami. That bed was now covered with stuff— clothes, scarves, I didn’t know what-all. Annie was at the mirror, a chem lab full of makeup spread out across the top of the bureau.
    Any hospital nurse knows how to disguise controlling behavior with faux helpfulness. “Let me help you gather up this makeup,” I said, starting to shovel things into her makeup bag as I spoke, “so you can finish in the car.”
    She shot me a resentful look. She clearly didn’t like me manhandling her makeup, but she was too well brought up to stop me.
    We were hardly out of the neighborhood when Jeremy’s phone rang. It was Mike, wondering where we were. He was going to blame me for our being late. I wished that I didn’t care.
    The atmosphere in the car wasn’t exactly party hearty. Jeremy was uneasy about being late; Annie was unhappy about being rushed; Cami was worried about the seat belt wrinkling her dress; and I fretted with the alone feeling that I got when I thought about my mother being gone. After a few minutes Finney started to look anxious. He wanted the people around him to be happy, and we didn’t seem to be cooperating.
    Shortly after we passed through Great Falls village, the driver turned into a development of huge suburban McMansions. The houses had three-car garages and elaborate curbside mailboxes. I supposed they also had high ceilings, grand foyers, and huge kitchens. Houses like this were supposed to make the owners feel grand. But how grand could you feel when the house next door was almost exactly like yours?
    Claudia and Mike and Rose and Guy were in the front hall, forming an informal reception line. Rose and Guy