as if I’m a child and follow her out the door and down the stairs.
SAWYER
Wednesday March 13: Nothing much doing today. Cured a little, but Diary, I really am neglecting my cure. But I simply cannot compose myself enough to keep quiet on the cure.
Harry and Joe came over and sat with Tillie and I. I certainly was angry with both of them. They acted too silly for words.
But probably I was disagreeable because I had the most terrible pleurisy. Painted my side with iodine.
Pleurisy—an inflammation of the inner chest wall of the lungs. My Google search on a word I didn’t know brought up pictures of people in pain. Can’t imagine painting iodine on skin helped, but it was 1918. Don’t imagine there was much that helped at all.
Neither can I imagine curing—lying outside in the open air. Even when it was cold. Even when it was hot. Lying still, being quiet, doing nothing … for hours. Sounds like hell. I imagine I would have been a lot like Evelyn. I would have gone there because that’s what I was told to do, but then would have done a crap-ass job with what was expected.
In the living room, Lucy sits on the floor, zoned in to cartoons and using the coffee table as a place to eat. If Mom finds out she’ll go nuclear, but I need the break. I put Evelyn’s diary on the coffee table, grab the pot and scoop more box mac-n-cheese onto Lucy’s plate.
I walk into the kitchen and place the pot next to the stack of stuff to be cleaned. I’ve helped Lucy with homework, played dolls until I thought my brain was about to crack and made her dinner. At the kitchen window, I do a double take and spot Veronica lying in a hammock while the town nutcase/psychic hovers near her head.
My cell pings, and my eyebrows draw together when I spot Dad’s name. I put in one earbud and listen using the text-to-voice app: It’s time for me to hang out with you two again. When would be a good time for you to drive up so I can see you and Lucy? You pick—this weekend or next?
Never. How’s that for an answer? I talk into my phone to text back: How about you pay your child support?
There’s a purring engine and Mom’s shiny Beamer flies into her marked spot on the big space of blacktop. There’s a garage in the back big enough for the semi without a rig that pulled in here early Saturday morning. We aren’t allowed to park in or near the garage, but only in one of the two spots designated on the side of the garage or on the street out front.
My cell pings two times in a row. It’s Dad, and when it chimes a third time, I turn my cell off. I don’t have the patience for Dad’s bull excuses.
I’m betting with how Mom slams her car door and rushes the house, Sylvia told Hannah about English and Hannah told Mom. Or maybe Sylvia snitched in person. The back door flies open, and Mom yanks off her sunglasses. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I lean back against the counter and fold my arms over my chest. “Want to pull back on the language? Lucy’s in the living room watching cartoons, eating the dinner I made her that you promised to make tonight. And thanks for picking her up from day care like you also promised. I had to split from practice early to get her. We owe more money on the day care account now for the late pickup and the director was ten shades of angry. And Coach is pissed at me again, and because you sweet-talk him, he blames me not you.”
Mom jerks like I threw a baseball in her face. “I didn’t promise you anything.”
“Yeah, you did. Last night before I went to bed, I asked if you would pick her up and make dinner since I had late practice.”
“You must be remembering incorrectly as I wouldn’t forget that.”
The muscles in my neck tense. “I walked into your room last night at ten and I said—”
“Enough!” she shouts. “I don’t want to hear it. I would remember, you’re wrong and none of what you’re saying has anything to do with the real problem. How could you refuse to work with Sylvia? Do you have any idea how many strings I had to pull to put you in that AP