Read Online Maud's House by Sherry Roberts - Free Book Online

asked in his patient, grating voice.
    “I don’t know. They seemed to have just appeared in my pocket. Like magic.”
    “There is no such thing as magic, Maud.”
    The shoplifting never amounted to much and George kept down the proceeds by holding my hand in the store. We strolled through cosmetics, shoes, hardware, from one red light special to another, looking like lovers, avoiding crime. Petty larceny didn’t shake George’s cool.
    Actually, the only time he ever lost his temper with me, the only time I ever went against his wishes, was when I took the job at the Round Corners Restaurant. I became a waitress because it gave me an excuse not to be an artist. Although I still entered the attic every morning and played chicken with a white piece of canvas, my life didn’t revolve around cows in flip-flops anymore (or their equivalent subject matter back then). I expanded my horizons to cooked cow: smothered steak and filet mignon.
    George disliked my new career move because it wasn’t “furthering my artistic goals,” as he put it, and because it was there I met Freda Lee. Freda Lee irritated George with her talk of soap operas and afternoon sex with Lewis Lee. She was so busy having fun with Lewis Lee, she was oblivious to the other things that made the world go around—the depression, the anger, the deviousness. I liked her immediately.
    Lewis Lee was the center of her life, her focus, her salvation. She supported him and three children on what she made at the restaurant. Lewis Lee seldom worked. Everyone, except Freda, called him lazy. Lewis was not a well man, she said. And he had the paperwork to prove it. Lewis Lee always found a doctor somewhere to swear he was sick or at the very least possibly dying. One time he had to travel all the way to Boston (and in his condition) for a reasonably poor prognosis. Still, Lewis Lee was Freda’s life. He was the air she breathed. And, in my mind, that was job enough.
    Freda’s sensuality slid over her body, fitting her tiny waist and lush hips; it whispered, like her tight polyester waitress uniform, as she walked. She fascinated men with her blonde hair, soft skin, and easy-going temper. She laughed, turned down their offers, dodged the occasional wandering hand. It wouldn’t occur to her to take them seriously. She was so wrapped up in Lewis Lee she wasn’t even aware she was flashing signals hot enough to melt the sky on a cold, snowy night.
    George considered Freda a bad influence, contributing to my already tenuous grasp on respectability. “Don’t be so stuffy,” I told George, balancing a large, glossy coffee table book (
The Joy of Impressionism,
I think) on my head. Since the Impressionism text was no great challenge, I also juggled four pine cones. Pine cones were tricky. The spikes, you know.
    George did not juggle, and the only books he balanced were his clients’. He was particular about appearances, his clothes, his ideas. He hated to wear the same pair of underwear two days in a row when I forgot the laundry. And he cringed when I became loud at softball games.
    “Kill the sucker, George! All right! No batter no batter no batter. Wooooeeee!” George sought dignity even in spikes. We drove home from those games, George staring straight out the windshield, tight-lipped; me coming down from that boy-did-we-slaughter-them high and miserably remembering all the rotten things I’d said about the other team’s mothers.
    “I don’t know what you want, Maud,” George said in a defeated voice.
    I was silent. Apologies, by then, had dubious value.
    “You know, I want you to be happy, Maud.” More Sesame Street therapy. “I want you to be the best you can be.”
    That was the attitude that got me in my present predicament.
    George the patron saint of the arts was 150 percent behind Odie Dorfmann’s reelection plans. They plotted the entire campaign together during an Expos game in our living room. Odie was always at our house either talking or