Arcadia's Gift(16)

“I know, honey, I know,” she whispered into my hair.

After school let out for the day, Bronwyn and Shawn stopped by to drop off some textbooks that I’d asked for. They had been at the funeral, but we didn’t have much chance to talk. They both called regularly, but neither seemed to know what to say to me. I guess I understood that.
We exchanged big hugs as I invited them inside. Identical looks of horror crossed their faces at seeing my normally put-together mom standing barefoot in the kitchen wearing her dirty bathrobe and eating peaches directly out of a can with her fingers. What I saw as progress they probably saw as a scene from Punked. I herded them upstairs.
I moved a heap of discarded pajamas and t-shirts from my desk chair and dropped them on top of my already-full hamper, where at least half fell off onto the floor. Bronwyn took the chair while Shawn sprawled out in my window seat. He picked up my binoculars and looked through them.
“Spying on the neighbors?” he asked.
“Birds,” I replied, then instantly felt stupid. I knew it sounded like a lame way to spend my time. “I’ve been watching the birds in the pines.”
Bronwyn bit her lip as she tended to do when she was uncomfortable. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your room like this before,” she commented, her eyes roaming around.
For the first time since I got home from the hospital, I really focused my attention on my surroundings. The bed was unmade and the sheets were loose and wrinkled from tossing and turning. Several dirty dishes with clumps of caked-on food were stacked on the desk like my own personal Leaning Tower of Pisa. Next to the dishes, the photos from my bulletin board lay in a crumpled heap from where I’d ripped them down in a moment of rage and regret. On the floor in front of the closet was a pile of old school papers that I’d pulled out of my nightstand drawers for some reason late one night, and never bothered putting back.
“You were always the neat one,” Bronwyn whispered.
“Well, now I’m the only one,” I snapped. Bronwyn cringed and gnawed at her lip again. My harsh tone shocked me as much as her, and I immediately felt sorry.
“Cady,” Shawn said, walking over and wrapping his arms around me “She didn’t mean anything bad. Don’t get angry. We’re just worried about you.”
I allowed myself the luxury of sinking into his skinny, yet strangely comforting, chest. A wave of calm coated me like a blanket. “I’m so sorry,” I sighed.
Bronwyn slid up behind me and joined our embrace. The calming sensation intensified and the tense muscles in my shoulders relaxed. Sandwiched between my friends was the best I’d felt since before my Dad left.
“I don’t have to be home for a couple of hours,” Bronwyn said, “Why don’t you let Shawn and I help you clean up?”
I groaned. I wasn’t in the mood to clean, but I was willing to concede that doing something productive might make me feel better. I nodded.
Bronwyn gathered all of the dirty clothes and the sheets off of my bed and dragged them off to the laundry room, while Shawn helped me make up the bed with clean linens. When we carried my dirty dishes downstairs, I noticed the heap already sitting in the sink and stacked on the countertops, the remnants of what couldn’t be stuffed into the dish washer. It didn’t look like anyone had run a load since the accident.#p#分页标题#e#
Bronwyn and I tackled the kitchen while Shawn ran the vacuum, first in my bedroom and then through the rest of the house. My mother, holed up in her bedroom, didn’t come out of her room to help.
By the time Bronwyn had to leave to get ready for her Bible study group, the house was more or less put to order. I hugged both of my friends tightly and watched as they trotted off to Shawn’s Toyota parked across the street. As they drove away, my energy left with them, replaced by dull emptiness.
Returning to my newly cleaned bedroom, I sank down on the plush cushion of my window seat, feeling a little like a balloon that just had the air let out. My hands automatically picked up my dad’s old pair of binoculars from his time in the Army. The cardinals looked like they were redecorating their nest. I wondered if they applied the same Feng Shui principles my mother did. Wouldn’t want to see their Chi off balance.
A smudge of color appeared in the background, and I readjusted my focus. It was my neighbor, stooped over in her herb garden clipping leaves and dropping them into a pouch at her waist. I didn’t know her name. We had adjoining backyards, but her house faced the next street over. The woman had moved in a year ago after our old neighbor died. My mother frequently complained about how poorly this one kept her yard. The garden took up almost half of the space, the bushy plants over-grown and planted haphazardly. The back half of the yard, the half which reached all the way up to our chain link fence, was a large patch of grass which had not been mowed once since the woman moved in, like an urban haven for all kinds of woodland creatures.