And Chloe’s mother had tittered!
How to explain to both her parents that it was unseemly for a grown woman of advancing years, married for nearly thirty, to titter when her husband paid her a half-hearted compliment by calling her the name of a red starchy root vegetable?
This afternoon Chloe walked in slowly, set down her school bag, pulled off her boots, and walked down the short corridor, past her parents’ bedroom, past the bedroom that no one ever went into anymore, past the bathroom, into the open area to put her lunchbox on the kitchen counter where it would be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Something smelled heavenly. Chloe didn’t want to admit it, because she didn’t want to encourage her mother in any way. What her mother needed was a tamping down of enthusiasm, not a fanning of the fire. Her mother and Blake shared that in common.
“Doesn’t that smell divine?” Lang giggled, turned around, and with floury hands, patted Chloe on both cheeks. “I only make divine things for my divine girl.” One of the few things Chloe tolerated about her mother was that she was short, making even Chloe seem tall by comparison.
Chloe brushed the white powder off her face. “Whatchya makin’?”
“Linzer tarts.”
“Doesn’t smell like Linzer tarts.” Chloe glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.
“Raspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”
Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”
“Full from lunch four hours ago?”
Lang got out some orange juice, a yoghurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warm jam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. She had to admit it was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”
“I’m thinking ratatouille.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. It’s a vegetable stew, I think. But it could be a condiment.” She chuckled. Honestly, why did Chloe have to be the only serious one in her house?
“Dad needs meat.”
“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll feed the carnivore some pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”
Chloe desperately needed to talk to her mother. She didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair straw straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absent-minded and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good,” she said.
That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, the hobby called. Jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.
Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.
“Are you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Mrs. Mencken told me about the Acadia prize. Ten thousand dollars is amazing. I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at anything. You will too, of course. Right?”
Now who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe managed to contain her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.
“You discussed it with Hannah and your boys?”
“Not necessarily,” Chloe replied. Disgusted is what she was. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”
Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not going to do it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”
Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the silence the ominous shadows of hollowed-out fangs essential for a story were abundantly obvious.
“I mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I? Because I didn’t go. Maybe you can write that story. I don’t think there’s an age limit on entrants.”
When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft. Their trip formed the foundation of much, if not all, of the resentment of Chloe’s teenage years. A blown-up photo in a heavy gold leaf frame of the Castlecomer glens hung prominently in the hallway.
Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe.
“You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” Lang said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”
“Make it up from what? I’m going to make up a story about something so dramatic that it will win first prize?”
“Why not? Blake is.”
How did her mom know this!
“I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—” She stopped herself from saying used condoms.
“You have an imagination, don’t you?”
“No, none. I need a story, Mom. Not musings about what it’s like to live on a puddle lake in Maine.”
“Puddle lake? Have you glimpsed the stunning beauty outside your own windows?”
In the afternoons, the glistening lake, blooming willows and birches trimming the shoreline, the railroad rising on the embankment did occasionally shine with the scarlet colors of life. That wasn’t the point.
“I can’t write about skiing or bowling, or learning to drive,” Chloe continued. “I need something substantial. And I have nothing.” Why couldn’t she talk about herself without allowing a whiff of self-pity to waft through her smallest words? The one ashen tragedy in their life she could never write about. And Lang knew that. So why push it? Besides, her mother had once informed her that the Devine women were too short to be tragic figures. “We can be stoics, but not tragics,” Lang had said a few years ago, when it seemed to everyone else that the very opposite was the only thing true. “Make it up, darling,” Lang repeated, unperturbed by her daughter’s tone. “You’re a very good writer.”
“Mom, I don’t want to be a writer.”
“Neither does Blake. Yet look at him.”
Chloe watched her mother walk to the printer in the computer room behind the sofa and peel off several sheets of paper. Lang slapped the rules of entry for the Acadia contest on the table.
“You