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The Painted Table(41)

By:Suzanne Field


“Well?” Joann says, impatient. Saffee notes the familiar clenched hands, the pursed lips. She feels cornered.

“I don’t know what to say, Mother.”

At the piano, April has also become impatient. Discordant notes and premature tempo race through the walls, further scrambling Saffee’s thoughts. Doesn’t April know that “Für Elise” should float, not gallop?

“I guess I’m not sure what normal is, Mother,” she says, knowing she sounds lame. “And anyway, why are you asking?”

Joann takes a deep breath, looks at the ceiling, and says, “I want to know because I want to have another baby, and your father is denying me that . . . pleasure.”

“What? A baby?” Saffee doesn’t let on she has heard them argue about this. “Don’t you think, I mean, do you think you should? I mean, Mother, what are you saying?”

“I want a boy. A cute little boy, fun, energetic. For Nels. It would bring me, us, new life. April is growing up, thirteen already. I know a baby would be a male version of little April.”

Nels, Joann tells Saffee, insists that her “nerves” wouldn’t take having another child. But that’s just an excuse, Joann scoffs. “The truth is that he doesn’t find me attractive anymore.”

Saffee feels intensely awkward. Shouldn’t this conversation be had with a girlfriend, not a daughter? Of course, Joann has no girlfriends.

Joann gets up and goes to the bureau, preens a bit before her mirror, and asks weakly, “Am I, Saffee? Am I still attractive?”

Saffee takes a deep breath and lies. “Mom. Of course you are attractive. And there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just fine, just fine, Mom.”

“Are you sure?”

Saffee is unnerved. Her mother is calling for help and she doesn’t know how to give it. Worse, she doesn’t want to hear any more. She stands, thrusts her hands into her pockets, and takes two or three steps to nowhere.

“Mom, I just told you what I think, but as for having a baby . . .”

Joann sighs, as if resigned that she will get no acceptable answers. She tilts her head back and again looks at the ceiling. “I hope April is almost through practicing,” she says, giving closure to the conversation.

“I’ve got a lot of homework, Mom,” Saffee says quietly and turns to leave the room.

“Fine. No, wait, Sapphire.” In an instant, Joann’s focus has changed. “Come back, one more thing.”

“What?”

“Promise me that when I’m old and infirm you’ll do something for me.”

“Do what?”

“Cut the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin. Promise me now.”

No response seems appropriate. Stunned that one minute her mother regarded her as confidante and the next as future caregiver, Saffee quickly retreats to the dining room.

April tries harder, slowly combining arpeggios with melody.

Saffee stares at her algebra book. Her conscience overrides both piano and equations. Guilt about lying crowds out the slight flattery of Joann’s asking for her opinion. Of course Saffee believes there is something “wrong” with her mother. Another baby? Absurd. But what could she have said? Both girls have noticed that their dad has been sleeping in the den. Maybe he isn’t as oblivious to their mother’s mental condition as they had thought.

Saffee copes with her mother by disregarding her, not analyzing her. She consoles herself with the thought that it is mere months until she goes off to college and her own life, one she anticipates will be “different” and, she hopes, better. For now she waits, detached and self-focused.

Bass and treble begin to mingle. April’s “Für Elise” flits, almost charmingly, through the air.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN



THE CATAPULT





It is July; college looms. One moment Saffee’s heart races with heady anticipation, the next she’s filled with suffocating fear.

Clothes are a concern. She needs clothes that give the impression that she belongs at a state university. What do such clothes look like? She has no one to consult and a mother who is unpredictable in stores. Years ago, important shopping was done in Minneapolis, but Saffee is hesitant to take the bus there alone. She will try to piece together what she needs in Miller’s Ford’s limited dress shops.

At Gilbert’s Fine Fashions, she timidly admires neatly folded stacks of sweaters in luscious colors. Any one of them would be a pleasure to own.

A tall, angular clerk, stylishly dressed and coiffed, brows raised, hovers nearby.

“You’re the Kimball girl, aren’t you?” she says.

“Well, ah . . .” Would it be wrong to correct her? And what does that name, right or wrong, mean to the woman? “No, I’m . . . it’s Kvaale and I’m going off to college and—”