Free How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed Page B

something bad. “Well, you’re the artistic one.” With this she smiled her near–Eddie Haskell smile. “I know how you hate the details; I knew you would prefer to leave them to me.”
    “And you never thought to ask?”
    “What was the need? When we are so close. When we know each other so well.” She paused. But before I could begin to sputter out some answer, she jumped right in and cut me off. “Let’s face it, you are a bit scattered. If it were up to you, we’d never get this done.”
    She had a point there, about my not wanting to get this done. But just this. Dismantling my mother’s apartment. Removing all trace of her until these bare walls, these scrubbed floors could have belonged to just anybody. Who’d want to hurry to do that? Who’d want to rush to get that done?
    “Let me remind you,” she twisted in the knife, “you always have trouble finishing things.”
    “Had. Did,” I said. But it was a puny response, its lack of conviction hardly lost on her.
    “So I think we should dispose of this quickly, in as businesslike a manner and as unemotionally as we can. Not that we both don’t feel sad, not that we both aren’t devastated.”
    I felt all my limbs sink into a familiar slide of passive resistance. I would have been great on those marches of civil disobedience led by Gandhi and his followers. When the Raj police were about to hoist me onto prison-heading oxen carts, when the nationalist opposition was about to attack, I could make myself as limp and jointless as a slug.
    “And good will come out of it, too. We’ll have lovely things that belonged to our mothers. They did have fabulous taste, after all. And…”
    “And…?”
    She hesitated. “I don’t know quite how to put it. But you of all people will understand. Not that two women sharing house holds are that rare. Not that in this day and age alternative lifestyles aren’t practically the norm. And believe me, I’m a regular donor to the AIDs Action Committee. I wrote the governor a scathing letter about his opposition to the Gay Marriage Act. Still, this is something we never really discussed, you and I. Understandably—given our community, Harvard, political correctness, our liberal values, our enlightened upbringing. Frankly, Abby, I feel—and I’m sure you do too—that it will come as quite a relief to erase all remnants of their unconventional lifestyle.”
    I pictured my mother and Henrietta in their Birkenstocks and denim wrap skirts, travel guides, maps, foreign currency sorted into their identical theftproof travel bags. I remembered their fine bone structure, their good manners, their gentleness, their gentlewomanliness. I rubbed my hand across the waxed mahogany dining table. A bowl of marble fruit sat in the center. The sideboard held candlesticks and a tea service. Cups in their saucers looked as if any minute they would be filled for arriving guests. In the kitchen hung their neat aprons; there were plants on the windowsills, and lavender sachets tucked into bedroom drawers. Everything spoke of quiet, order, comfort. Unconventional? “But they loved each other,” I said.
    “Love.” Lavinia made the dismissive sound the French do when they push air through pursed lips.
    “And they were so happy.”
    I expected her to tsk away happiness, too. Instead, she ignored me. “The situation was embarrassing. Not to mention my brother’s stupid book…”
    “Really? You were so supportive. You gave the book party for him.”
    “Which you refused to attend.”
    “For good reason, need I point out.”
    “One has to keep up appearances. Besides, he’s my brother. You’ve got to be there for those you love. How would it look? And it is a novel. Not fact, but a work of fiction, after all.”
    I kept my mouth shut. I studied the photograph of the mirror that hung on the wall across from me. Nineteenth century. Gold leaf. $1,200 was typed underneath its pasted Polaroid. Which one of us was going to end up with