Read Online Love Me Tender by Audrey Couloumbis - Free Book Online Page A

looked around, so I shrugged. But when she turned back, I nodded. Cute. Mel grinned.
    Mel's momma didn't sit. She kept a plate on the counter and took bites from her toasted bagel as she went about the kitchen, watering her single houseplant and setting out food for a cat I hadn't yet seen.
    At the same time, she covered the usual territory—what grades were we in now and did we play any musical instruments, like that. I reported I played the guitar. Kerrie said she took ballet and then took a bite of her scrambled eggs. She started coloring as she chewed.
    She didn't say she'd taken ballet happily for one week. Or that for ten months and three weeks since, it had taken bullying and bribery to get her to the two classes a week Mel was paying for. Kerrie liked tutus and tiaras. The hard work of ballet class didn't appeal to her in the least.
    “Ballet is important for girls,” the grandmother said. “It makes them graceful, but it also makes them strong.”
    Kerrie didn't mention she was looking forward to month twelve, when the contract Mel signed would expire. That we were all looking forward to that. Without even looking at each other, neither Mel nor I blew Kerrie's cover story.
    As we ate our breakfast, the sounds in the room were the clink of our forks on the plates, the squeaky progress of Kerrie's markers, and the grandmother doing a little kitchen cleanup.
    The grandmother finally sat down, asking, “This one that's coming, do you know whether it's a boy or a girl?”
    “No, I didn't want the doctor to tell me.”
    “So you weren't trying for a boy?”
    “If you must know, Momma, we weren't trying.” Mel pushed her chair back from the table so she could stretch her legs.
    From outside, a voice very like Mel's, should she have been imitating an ambulance siren, called, “Yoooo-hoo, Momma.” We had no more than put down our forks when a woman came in through the back door.
    The grandmother's voice was quick and sharp. “What on earth is the matter with you, Clare, squealing at me like that? The neighbors will think the house is afire again.”
    “Why, Momma, there's a strange car in the driveway—” Aunt Clare stopped, open-mouthed, and put her hand to her chest.
    “It's an investment,” the grandmother said, and she was too quick for me, I couldn't tell whether it was sarcasm. Besides, Aunt Clare was something of a distraction. Her voice on the machine was so like my mother's that I'd expected some version of Mel. Tall and flat-chested mostly, nothing showy about her.
    But Aunt Clare was so blond, so rounded where Mel had never been, so... glittery, with earrings and beads on her shirt. Her shorts were styled to look like a little skirt. It was barely eight o'clock in the morning and already she was dressed like Memphis Barbie.
    “Well, if it isn't Melisande,” she said. “Isn't this a bolt from the blue.”
    “Is it?” Mel asked in a cool voice.
    “You haven't changed one bit,” Aunt Clare said. “Or is that one of those joke pillows you've stuffed up under there?”
    My breath caught.
    Mel said, “No joke.” Which is not to say that Mel took this crack about the Belly all that well. I saw that she wanted to look like a woman who had never heard of raging hormones. She might even want to trade places with a woman who wore beads before the first soap opera of the day came on the TV.
    Mainly, I saw how Aunt Clare wanted to hurt Mel and she had; Mel looked like she could be poured under a door. I hated Mel's little sister at that moment.
    “Melisande always had the awfullest sense of humor,” Aunt Clare said, looking at me. “You must be Elvira.”
    “Want to try these false eyelashes?” I reached for Kerrie's sack. “They've only been used once, and they're just the thing for that touch of glamour.”
    Aunt Clare gave me a suspicious look. “I don't believe I'd be interested.”
    “Too bad,” I said, and began to spread jelly on my last bit of toast.
    “Pretty girls,” Aunt Clare