Free Beyond Deserving by Sandra Scofield

pair of bumps, but now Ursula can see that she is right, they are filling, rounding, though you would hardly call them a bosom. Not on a girl who weighs a hundred pounds.
    â€œOh honey, they’re nothing!” Ursula says, almost laughing. She remembers her girlhood chums weeping into their fists because they had little breasts instead of Ursula’s full ones.
    â€œIf I turn out to have breasts like yours, I am going to have them cut off!” Juliette pushes past Ursula and out of the room.
    Ursula washes her face and combs her tangled hair. She has no part. Her hair springs out in all directions. After an inch of growth, it begins to tighten at the ends, then to dry and break off. It is time for a cut. Juliette has inherited enough of Ursula’s curly genes to have a mass of waves, and curls and wisps where she keeps pieces trimmed. Her color is better than Ursula’s flat brown, with the russet tones of the Fishers.
    In her room, Ursula puts on one of her nice-lady outfits, a jersey shirtwaist suitable for court or meetings. Michael is dressing with fastidious tedium, tugging and tucking to get his shirt set just so. He has his pants partway down his hips, the fly open, his hips thrust to one side to hold them up. She resists the urge to swat him. She eyes a pile of laundry in the corner, much of which will have to be ironed—a task she usually tackles during Sunday night’s Masterpiece Theatre show. She sometimes wishes that Michael would wear polyester like other teachers, but it was she who taught him to love cotton. He could wear jeans these days, teaching, but he likes a certain quality twill.
    She admires his flat ass. A Fisher trait. Carter has inherited her roundness and short waist. Though he is a good-looking boy, he won’t wear so well as his dad.
    â€œShove that all down the laundry chute,” she says. “I’ll go down and put a load in to wash.”
    The door to the basement snaps behind her with a loud crack, like a gunshot. She insisted Michael install a spring-door because nobody ever closes the damned door, but sometimes it surprises her, it works so well.
    In the basement she picks clothes up from the area below the chute, and hurriedly sorts them into piles of dark and light. She stuffs the light clothes into the washer, adds detergent, and hesitates for a moment. If Fish is asleep, he won’t be when she starts this machine. She punches ON. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of life, no sounds from behind the curtain that separates Fish’s sleeping area from the rest of the basement.
    Someone flushes the toilet in the corner and turns on the shower. Well, tough on that score, too, because the washer will pull off the water pressure, but she doesn’t feel bad enough about it to turn the machine off. Besides, Fish knows about the water. And he has more time than she does.
    She notices that the door to the outside is slightly ajar. Damn him! she thinks. She has a thing about doors, granted, but is it really too much to ask Fish to close the door when he comes in at night? They have been robbed; it is not just a theoretical threat. Once in Portland someone came in while they were gone during the day, and took their stereo, the only thing they owned of value, and a box of mushrooms. Then, here, the first year Carter was in high school, someone came in the unlocked front door early in the morning, and drove her Toyota away, while they were all upstairs, dressing.
    She goes up the two steps to the door and slams it shut and locks it.
    She is wiping off the breakfast table when she hears Juliette shriek. By the time she gets to her daughter’s room, Michael is already there. Juliette’s windows overlook the street on one side, and a row of wisteria on the other.
    â€œHe was peeing on our bushes!” Juliette says furiously. “Without a stitch on!”
    Michael looks over his shoulder at Ursula. “Who else?” he says