For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,73
having somebody to talk to. Lynn loved the evenings, after the girls had gone to bed. She and Adam invariably cleaned the kitchen together and then took herbal tea or coffee to the living room, where they read some of the time in companionable silence, but most often talked. "Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—Of cabbages—and kings," to quote Lewis Carroll.
Not so far off, either. She and Adam hadn’t yet discussed sealing wax, but she thought they’d covered cabbages—she detested them, he loved even such horrors as corned beef and cabbage—and kings, in the form of royal weddings. They had taken the girls shoe shopping one day, and gone to a park overlooking the Columbia River where they could see huge freighters unloading cargo from foreign climes.
She had missed such conversation dreadfully. Lynn and her mother had always been good friends. Until Adam, Lynn had never been able to talk to anyone the way she could to her mother. In college, she’d had friends and roommates, of course, but all of them were so busy with finals and labs and boyfriends, and really everyone at that age was so self-centered, she realized now, that nobody listened very well. Probably including her.
Brian was a natural storyteller, but the stories were all about himself. His prowess as a high school and college sports star, his adventures mountain climbing and skiing, his starring role in campus theater productions. She had been fascinated and awestruck and grateful that he wanted to be with her, but after the first year she began to notice that he wasn’t very interested in her dreams or successes, and he’d cut off her attempts to discuss politics or philosophy or a book she had read by reaching for the remote control or grabbing his jacket and saying casually over his shoulder, "I promised Cranston I’d whip him at one-on-one. You were just going to read or something anyway, weren’t you?" He always said it that way: just. You’re going to do something unimportant, dull.
Adam enjoyed reading as much as she did. Lynn was flattered when she discovered him reading a book she’d mentioned loving. Since then, he had read several based on her recommendations. He didn’t always feel about them the same way she did, which she didn’t mind. They’d had some rousing arguments.
The television was rarely on here, she’d discovered. The girls watched a couple of favorite shows and, naturally, Rose had a huge collection of movies mostly bought by Grandma McCloskey, but Adam limited how much Rose could watch a day, as Lynn had always done with Shelly. He religiously watched the news, primarily because world events had such a bearing on the next day’s stock market. A revolution in some tiny country half a world away would impact the U.S. economy because a raw material for manufacturing came from there. She was impressed by Adam’s instant grasp of the import of such news. Obscure political events took on meaning for her, too. She found that she read the newspapers and watched the television news with more interest now.
Only occasionally did she bump against a closed gate beyond which she wasn’t welcome. A very few topics brought stinging reminders that their closeness was illusion.
Tonight, for example, Lynn curled her legs under her at one end of the sofa and said, "I forgot to tell you that your mother called today."
Adam laid down his book willingly. "What did she want?"
"Nothing special. I think she just wanted to chat." Lynn frowned, trying to remember. "She didn’t leave a message."
"What did you ‘chat’ about?" He looked unwillingly fascinated. "I didn’t know my mother knew how."
“Oh, she has an opening in a San Francisco art gallery next weekend. She asked if I’d like to come over and use her potter’s wheel and kiln." As explanation, Lynn added, "I’d told her I took a couple of years of ceramics in college. I loved using a wheel."
"Ah." He sounded amused and a little bitter. "The way to her heart."
"Did you learn?"
"She tried," Adam said shortly.
"Did you?"
"Probably not." He laughed without much humor. "I felt about her studio like most kids do about a baby brother. It was my competitor for her attention, and it always won." This smile, though crooked, became more relaxed, more genuine. "Besides, I have not a grain of artistic ability. I made the ugliest pots you’ve ever seen."
"It’s odd that we were both only children. I felt a little more secure than you did, though."