“Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.” He handed her the cup of steaming coffee that he already had in his hand. “Thanks, Joe.” She held it in both hands and blew on it a little to cool it off.
Joe nodded, embarrassed, but proud to have helped her in this small way.
Not knowing what to do or say next, he backed away from her and escaped to the other side of the room. She smiled, touched by his sweet, awkward gesture.
Annie surveyed the food again. She knew she needed to eat, but the knot in her stomach was taking up more than its fair share of the room. It was strange, because she hadn’t noticed feeling that way until she saw the blonde woman at the cemetery. Grief had robbed her of an appetite during the past couple of days, but she hadn’t felt the queasy tension that she did now. It gnawed at her relentlessly. She wondered if a Rice Krispie bar would make her feel better and was walking over to the table to get one, when she heard them.
“I just can’t get over how much he looks like Jessica,” Terri exclaimed to Eric’s mother. “They have the same eyebrows, the same mouth. It’s kind of eerie.”
“They do look alike, but Jessie is changing so much every day. Two months ago when she was first born, though, they could have been twins.” Both women stood next to each other, shaking their heads back and forth slowly. It seemed to Annie that they were looking at something on the table in front of them.
“I’m just glad I had Jessie first. Can you imagine how it would be if I’d had her after all this happened?”
“It sure would’ve been hard to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it? Yeah -- I really enjoyed that back labor,” Terri said sarcastically. “And colic is such a treat.” She took a bite of the sandwich she held in her free hand.
Annie stepped up next to the table to see what they were looking at and froze in her tracks. There on the white lace tablecloth were the Polaroid pictures the nurse had taken of Dillon right after he’d been born.
“Where did you get those?” Annie asked, shaken by the sight of her child, the child she had left behind at the cemetery less than an hour before.
Up snapped their heads as well as the pictures as Evelyn, Eric’s mother grabbed them and pulled them close to her chest as if trying to hide a good poker hand.
“Now, Annie, you shouldn’t be looking at these right now.”
“And you should?” Annie shot back at her without thinking. “Where did you get them?” She demanded again. By now a hush settled over the room, everyone riveted to the scene.
“The nurse at the hospital gave them to Eric and I thought that I should hold onto them until you were ready to see them. They’ll only upset you right now, dear,” she said, reaching out to pat her hand. Annie pulled back, nearly spilling her coffee. “As you can see, I’m right.”
“Please give them to me,” Annie said as calmly as she could. She put down the Styrofoam cup and held out her hand toward her mother-in-law. She was raging inside, furious that so many decisions were being made about her behind her back, but she knew that if she unleashed her anger, that would confirm in everyone’s minds that she was losing it. She wasn’t losing it -- she was grieving.
“I only want what’s best for you,” said Evelyn, still holding the pictures tightly. The two women stood there in what appeared to be a stand off. Annie couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t come out as a shriek, so she just stood there motionless, looking the older woman squarely in the eye. Evelyn was flustered but it was due more to anger than concern. No one told her what to do. “I’ll just keep them until you’re ready.” She tucked them into her apron pocket, patting it in a quietly deliberate motion.
“When will that be, Evelyn?” Annie’s voice was losing a little of its control. “How will you know when I’m ready?”
The room was completely quiet. The only sounds that could be heard were the birds chirping in the trees outside and Evelyn’s increasingly heavier breathing as she tried to think of an answer. Suddenly the slam of the screen door shattered the silence. The piercing sound made everyone jump. It was Eric coming inside from having a cigarette. He strode into the room, his stress having just been lifted and blown away like the smoke he’d just exhaled out on the front porch. Oblivious to the heavy plaque of tension that coated every surface in the room, he promptly went to the table, grabbed a plate and started piling some potato salad onto it. It took him a few seconds to notice that all eyes were on Annie and his mother.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Did I miss something?” He put the serving spoon back into the tangerine-colored Tupperware bowl that held what had to be a vat of potato salad. It flipped over the edge and landed on the tablecloth with a muffled thud. There was an audible intake of air, as though the room itself had been holding its breath. Everyone knew how fussy Evelyn Morgan was about her tablecloths. Terri grabbed a napkin and swooped in to clean up the spill before anyone was able to exhale. “Nice going,” she hissed at her brother as she gave him a dirty look.
“Like I said, what’s going on? Annie?” The activity at the table and hearing Eric say her name broke Annie’s concentration and made her look in his direction. There he stood, Chinet plate balanced on his left hand, looking at her expectantly. Why couldn’t he just put down the plate and come to her side, to her rescue? Why did she have to feel so alone?
“I asked your mom to give me the pictures she has of Dillon.” Annie did her best to state her case with as little emotion as possible. After the scene in the cemetery, she knew that he already thought she was going crazy. She didn’t want to add any ammunition to his artillery by letting her feelings get in the way. “And she refused.”
Eric sighed. He felt his mother’s gaze upon him and exhaled again, a deep, defeated sigh.
“Mom, just give me the pictures, okay?” He held out his hand, waiting for her to comply. His mother hesitated for a second and then reached into her pocket to retrieve them. She looked at them one last time before handing them over to her son. Terri, who was standing behind her, peeked over Evelyn’s shoulder as they were passed to Eric. “I still can’t believe how much he looks like Jessica.”
Without saying a word, Annie quietly walked to the front hall, took her purse off the hook on the wrought iron coat tree, and left.
“That was real nice of you to just leave me there like that,” Eric stated as he walked into their living room later that evening. ‘What were you thinking?”
He threw his keys down on the end table. They landed in a jumbled heap in front of her, startling her awake. She’d fallen asleep after having dissolved in an avalanche of tears on the couch when she’d gotten home several hours before. She was confused, not knowing how much time had passed.
“What time is it?” she asked, groggy and puffy-eyed. Trying to focus on the watch on her right wrist, she blinked and pushed her hair back. “Is it really 8:00 p.m.?” She’d left his parents’ house five hours ago. Then she looked at Eric again. “Did you just get home?”
He sat down in the armchair across from her, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Yes, I just got home. Since you took the car, I needed to get a ride. I didn’t think there was a rush. Besides, you seemed like you wanted to be alone.” He looked at her with hard, cold eyes. When she tried to look more deeply into them, past the anger, he shifted his gaze to the other side of the room.
“I’m sorry -- but I had to get out of there. If I said anything I would have lost it. I just had to go.”
“Why? What was the big deal?” Eric bounced his leg nervously, still not looking at her.
“The big deal was that your mom had pictures of Dillon that I didn’t even know she had, and she wouldn’t give them to me. Then Terri kept saying how much he looked like Jessica. It was just