Read Online Around the Bend by Shirley Jump - Free Book Online

dressed.”
    “Ma, let me in.” The dread doubled now, tightened in my throat, wrapped around my chest, and with a whoosh of memory sent me spiraling back five years.
    To another door I couldn’t open, another calling of fine on the other end, when things hadn’t been fine at all.
    Not at all.
    “Now, Ma. Open the door. Please.”
    I tried the knob, but the door held fast. “Let me in.” More urgent, my hand working the knob, even as I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. Her voice on the other end, muffled, but finally, an “I’m coming,” and then, the sound of metal clicking against metal, chambers sliding into place, and then it gave way, allowing me entry.
    “See? I told you. I’m perfectly fine.” She stood in her room, one hand gripping the back of a dark blue armchair, the cheap kind with a printed finish to cover for food stains. Sweat marched across her brow, and even in the dim light from the bedside lamp I could see a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with Maybelline.
    Relief rolled over me, then anger, then worry, like tides coming in at the end of a long day. I wanted to shake her, to make her sit down, to give her some eggs. But most of all, to get her to stop covering up. It was something our family had always done too damned well. “You’re not fine. You’re sick. We should stay here today. Take a rest.”
    A flicker of movement, and an almost imperceptible push off from the chair, like a swimmer who didn’t want to get caught cheating in the pool. A few measured steps to where Reginald lay on a quilted blanket, his name embroidered in bright blue letters underneath his snout. A Zip-Loc of pig chow sat beside a monogrammed ceramic bowl. My mother bent to open it, and a sound, almost a mew, escaped her. Betraying something I’d never heard before.
    Weakness.
    “Ma?”
    She drew in a sharp, quick breath. “I’m not sick.” But she wouldn’t look at me when she said it and she had yet to get the pig chow. Her hand reached out, searching blindly for the edge of the bed, banging in a widening circle, grasping at the ugly brown and peach floral quilt, curling around it in a rosette, before hauling herself to the corner of the bed.
    I didn’t wait or argue. I crossed the room, dumped what looked like a reasonable amount of feed into Reginald’s bowl and then faced my mother, hands on my hips. Roles reversed. Me, the irresponsible one, giving her the grown-up glare. “You look anything but fine. And we are not getting in that car until you tell me what’s wrong.”
    “Noth—” She cut off the word when she saw it wasn’t getting her anywhere. “I’m tired. You try getting to sixty-seven and see how you feel.”
    “You’re lying.” I should know. I’d become an expert, just ask Nick.
    “I’m not.” She drew herself up, dared me to disagree. All traces of weakness disappeared, to the point where I could almost think I’d imagined it. She got to her feet, brushed off her dark blue traveling suit, but I noticed she’d traded her pumps for slippers, and her leg still had that water-logged look. Again, I questioned the wisdom of travel.
    “Are you ready to go?” Ma said, clear and chipper as always.
    I glanced again at her leg. “I really think we should—”
    “Get in the car, Hilary. We have a lot of road to cover today.” And just like that, my temporary rule as leader was toppled.
    I opened my mouth to protest, shut it when my motherbrushed past me, her packed suitcase in hand, Reginald at her feet. I packed up his bed and bowl, grabbed his package of food and fell into line behind the pig.
     
    I think God put Ohio—flat, plain, filled with nothing but corn and cows—in the United States to torture me. It was hours before we saw anything remotely interesting.
    I drove and drove, missing Nick, my mind playing awful tricks, flashing scenarios about where he’d gone last night—without me. Why was I worried? Nick had never given me reason to doubt his fidelity, but