Seven Up - By Janet Evanovich Page 0,91

to be safe," Grandma said.

I followed my mother into the kitchen and helped pick up the pieces.

"It slipped out of my hand," my mother said.

"That's what I thought."

Nothing ever seems to change in my parents' house. The kitchen feels just as it did when I was a little girl. The walls get repainted and the curtains replaced. New linoleum was laid down last year. Appliances get swapped out as they became unrepairable. That's the extent of the renovation. My mother has been cooking potatoes in the same pot for thirty-five years. The smells are the same, too. Cabbage, applesauce, chocolate pudding, roast lamb. And the rituals are the same. Sitting at the small kitchen table for lunch.

Valerie and I did our homework on the kitchen table, under my mother's watchful eye. And now I imagine Angie and Mary Alice keep my mother company in the kitchen.

It's hard to feel like a grown-up when nothing ever changes in your mother's kitchen. It's like time stands still. I come into the kitchen and I want my sandwiches cut into triangles.

"Do you ever get tired of your life?" I asked my mother. "Is there ever a time when you'd like to do something new?"

"You mean like get in the car and just keep driving until I get to the Pacific Ocean? Or take a wrecking ball to this kitchen? Or divorce your father and marry Tom Jones? No, I never think about those things." She took the top off the cake plate and looked at her cupcakes. Half chocolate with white icing and half yellow with chocolate icing. Multicolored spinkles on the white icing. She mumbled something that sounded a little like fucking cupcakes.

"What?" I asked. "I couldn't hear you."

"I didn't say anything. Just go in and sit down."

"I was hoping you could give me a ride to the funeral parlor tonight," Grandma said to me. "Rusty Kuharchek is laid out at Stiva's. I went to school with Rusty. It's going to be a real good viewing."

It wasn't like I had anything else to do. "Sure," I said, "but you'll have to wear slacks. I've got the Harley."

"A Harley? Since when do you have a Harley?" Grandma wanted to know.

"There was a problem with my car, so Vinnie loaned me a motorcycle."

"You are not taking your grandmother on a motorcycle," my mother said. "She'll fall off and kill herself."

My father very wisely didn't say anything.

"She'll be okay," I said. "I've got an extra helmet."

"You're responsible," my mother said. "If anything happens to her, you're the one who's going to be visiting her in the nursing home."

"Maybe I could get a motorcycle," Grandma said. "When they take away your car driving license does that include motorcycles?"

"Yes!" we all said in unison. No one wanted Grandma Mazur back on the road.

Mary Alice had been eating her dinner with her face down on her plate because horses don't have hands. When she picked her face up it was covered with smashed potatoes and gravy. "What's a lesbian?" she asked.

We all sat frozen.

"It's when girls have girlfriends instead of boyfriends," Grandma said.

Angie reached for her milk. "Homosexuality is thought to be the result of an aberrant chromosome."

"I was going to say that next," Grandma said.

"What about horses?" Mary Alice asked. "Are there lesbian horses?"

We all looked at one another. We were stumped.

I stood at my seat. "Who wants a cupcake?"

GRANDMA USUALLY GETS dressed up for an evening viewing. She has a preference for black patent pumps and swirly skirts just in case there's some beefcake present. As a concession to the motorcycle, she was wearing slacks and tennis shoes tonight.

"I need some biker clothes," she said. "I just got my Social Security check, and first thing tomorrow I'm going shopping, now that I know you've got this Harley."

I straddled the bike. And my father helped Grandma get on behind me. I turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, and the vibrations rumbled through the pipes.

"Ready?" I yelled at Grandma.

"Ready," she yelled back.

I went straight up Roosevelt Street to Hamilton Avenue, and in a short time we were at Stiva's, parked in the lot.

I helped Grandma off and removed her helmet. She stepped away from the bike and straightened her clothes. "I can see why people like these Harleys," she said. "They really wake you up down there, don't they?"

Rusty Kuharchek was in Slumber Room number three, the positioning of Rusty indicating that his relatives had cheaped out on his casket. Horrific deaths and those purchasing