Page 53 - WTP Vol. XI #2

The thick band on his finger caught the light while he was thanking his grant committees—and she knew someone was tidying him up. Someone was tucking their arms around his neck when he battled a knot in his proof. Someone was cooking for him, raising his children—
More likely, someone was a lawyer, or a doctor, or a screenwriter or a programmer or a CFO. Someone was buying expensive things, thousand-dollar things,
it, so I feel fine.”
“Why are you spending so much money though? You could come home. I’ll make dinner for you and your friends.”
“Mom. It’s fine. I’ll be back by ten.”
“Nine. I want you in bed and well-rested for your test.”
“But Dad said—”
“Dad—” She takes a breath, shoving invisible words back into her mouth. “Dad doesn’t give the best ad- vice sometimes, okay? Nine o’clock. I’ll be waiting.”
“Fine. Fine. See you.”
Once her mother had remarked that she took after
Rose.
“You mean she takes after me,” she replied politely.
Yes, of course, her mother agreed, never one to be caught with a grammatical error.
There would be no Rose, no Alicia, if there weren’t a Paul. If she had kept her promise to stay in touch with Fred. If she hadn’t let all those blazers and dress pants become moth-eaten in the back of the closet, behind Paul’s gold-plated revolving tie rack. This is the only life she gets.
Sometimes she thinks about telling her daughters that they will grow to hate her as she hates her own mother—that, worse, they will grow to love her as she loves her own mother.
She’s late to pick up Alicia. Her daughter looks up at her with huge blue eyes from the soccer field, mud staining her shorts. She’s too slow to hug her; it is Alicia who wraps her arms around her mother’ waist first.
All she can think about while her daughter’s thin fingers probe at her abdomen is how neither of her children look like her.
Lee is a sophomore at Binghamton University. Her work has been previously published in Paper Crane Journal, The Augment Review, Blue Marble Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs. She is the Editor- in-Chief of Asian Outlook. Along with writing fiction, she also runs her own book review blog, le livre en rose.
“T
here would be no Rose,
no Alicia, if there weren’t a Paul. If she had kept her
promise to stay in touch with Fred. If she hadn’t let all those blazers and dress pants become moth-eaten in the back of the closet, behind Paul’s gold-plated revolving tie rack. This is the only life she gets. “
for him and he was buying expensive, thousand-dol- lar things for her, too. And she loved him, of course.
The stiff wheel is still stiff; the shopping cart skids across the blacktop lot. She doesn’t remember put- ting anything in the trunk, or thinking about how to keep the milk cool so it won’t spoil on her way to soccer and to the library and back home.
First Fred and then Paul and then Rose and then Alicia and then PaulRoseAlicia now.
Her phone growls from her back pocket. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom, it’s me. Listen, you don’t need to pick me up tonight. I’m going out to Denny’s tonight with Hannah and Liz.”
“Tonight? Don’t you have a calc test tomorrow?” “Yeah, but I’ve been at the library all day studying for
46