Page 240 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

“How is she?” I ask.

“Oh, thorny as ever. That’s why I had that thing installed.” She points to a
satellite dish perched on the roof. “We watch foreign soaps. The Arabic ones are
the best, or the worst, which comes down to the same thing. We try to figure out
the plots. It keeps her claws off me.” She charges through the front door.
“Welcome home. I’ll fix you something to eat.”

It’s strange being back in this house. I see a few unfamiliar things,
like the gray leather armchair in the living room and a white wicker end table
beside the TV. But everything else is more or less where it used to be. The
kitchen table, now covered by a vinyl top with an alternating pattern of eggplants
and pears; the straight-backed bamboo chairs; the old oil lamp with the wicker
holder, the scalloped chimney stained black with smoke; the picture of me and
Mamá—me in the white shirt, Mamá in her good dress—still hanging above the
mantel in the living room; Mamá’s set of china still on the high shelf.

And yet, as I drop my suitcase, it feels as though there is a gaping hole in the
middle of everything. The decades of my mother’s life here with Thalia, they are
dark, vast spaces to me. I have been absent. Absent for all the meals Thalia and
Mamá have shared at this table, the laughs, the quarrels, the stretches of
boredom, the illnesses, the long string of simple rituals that make up a lifetime.
Entering my childhood home is a little disorienting, like reading the end of a
novel that I’d started, then abandoned, long ago.
“How about some eggs?” Thalia says, already donning a print bib apron,
pouring oil in a skillet. She moves about the kitchen with command, in a
proprietary way.
“Sure. Where is Mamá?”

“Asleep. She had a rough night.”
“I’ll take a quick look.”
Thalia fishes a whisk from the drawer. “You wake her up, you’ll answer to
me, Doctor.”

I tiptoe up the steps to the bedroom. The room is dark. A single long narrow
slab of light shoots through the pulled curtains, slashes across Mamá’s bed. The
air is heavy with sickness. It’s not quite a smell; rather, it’s like a physical
presence. Every doctor knows this. Sickness permeates a room like steam. I
stand at the entrance for a moment and allow my eyes to adjust. The darkness is