remember when I tried to teach you how to knit?”
“The recollection still pains me,” Sally jokes. Our eyes meet again and she
laughs. I feel the sudden urge to lean in and knot my lips to her ribbony mouth,
but I know that that’s wrong. These people are no longer strangers to me, but
familiar characters, like something from a recurring dream or old photograph.
Together we compose a family – mother and father and their kids, all eating
together in the light of our slanted home.
“I was having this dream when I heard a crash in the kitchen,” Mom says,
fussing over her placemat, “You know what it was? Lucy! She was trying to get
the licorice I’d just bought! I took her up to Sally’s room, where Sally was still
working on their drawing of the tree house and I asked her if she’d even realized
that her sister had snuck out. ‘No,’ she says, and I thought that was funny – isn’t
it funny? Anyhow, it was a normal day. Like any other day. I walked around the
house a lot. It was as if I’d forgotten something somewhere. I feel that way a lot
when I take naps, though. I suppose it’s just me wanting to go back to sleep.” She
sips her wine and adjusts the collar of her dress. Dad slides his hand off of my
shoulder as he returns to eating. It’s only then that I feel the shadow of his touch.
“Could I help build Lucy’s tree house tomorrow?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Bobby says. “If the girls ever finish drawing it.”
“We’ll do it tonight,” Sally says. “Do you want to help us?”
“Not until after dessert,” Mom says. The others, who had been smiling,
go silent.
“What’s for dessert?” Dad asks, as Mom collects our plates.
“Pear pie.”
“Yuck!” says Lucy. “Pears have worms in them!”
I laugh and turn to Sally, but she doesn’t even smile this time.
“I really don’t want dessert,” she says.
“Well I want dessert!” Mom says.
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