Read Online One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones, Ann Sullivan - Free Book Online

rose
and suddenly drop to the ground,
what good would it do me?
    I still wouldn’t be able
to rake them up into huge soft piles
like I used to rake
the maple leaves back home.
    And even if I could,
I wouldn’t exactly be able
to jump into a pile of palm fronds
without getting all cut up, now would I?
    I know fifteen
is way too old
to jump in the leaves
and I haven’t actually done it in years.
    The truth is,
I wouldn’t be caught dead jumping in the leaves
now
.
But I guess I liked knowing that they were there.
Just in case.

    Trudging Through Whip’s Pathetic Palm Forest
    I’m suddenly decked
by this major wave of nostalgia
for the maple tree in my front yard back home.
    I miss its knotty old arms,
and that lap-like spot
between its two lowest branches,
    such an easy climb up,
as though it had grown like that on purpose
just for me.
    I read
The Whipping Boy
sitting in that tree.
I read
A Wrinkle in Time
there.
And
Tuck Everlasting
.
    I read
To Kill a Mockingbird

in that maple.
And every word Richard Peck ever wrote.
    I read
Speak

and
Hard Love
and
Hope Was Here

in those branches.
    And Mom and I
were sitting up there
when she read me
Charlotte’s Web
.
    That was
some
tree.

    Oh,
Great
    Whip’s standing out in front of the house
waiting for me.
And when he sees me,
he shouts out my name and starts
trotting down the driveway toward me
like that puppy I had when I was seven,
who used to get so excited when I got home from school
that he’d pee all over me.
    â€œBoy, am I glad to see you,” Whip says.
“If you hadn’t shown up in another couple of minutes,
I was going to get a posse together.”
    A posse?
    Now, I don’t usually think of myself
as a particularly
mean
person,
but suddenly my mouth flies open
and the words come shooting out like arrows.
“What I can’t understand, Whip,
is why you’re so worried about me
now
,
when you haven’t given a shit about me
for the last fifteen years.”
    Whip’s tail suddenly stops wagging.
“That’s not how it was. I’ve been wanting to explain—”
“I don’t care
what
you’ve been wanting,” I say.
And I brush right past him,
    into the house.

    When I Get Upstairs to My Room
    I find a package lying on my bed.
It’s from Lizzie!
    I rip it open.
And instantly go mega-splotchy:
it’s filled with fiery red maple leaves.
They’re from my old tree, her note says.
My old tree!
    But the thing is,
she’s ironed them flat
between two sheets of wax paper.
“So they’ll last,” she says.
    I try to pull the sheets apart,
but they’re all melted together.
    That damn wax paper.
It makes it impossible to smell them.
Impossible to feel them.
Impossible.
    I know Lizzie meant well,
but there’s just something so awful about those leaves,
something so completely pathetic
about the fact that they’re the only
real bit of fall I’ll see this season.
    I crumple them up
and fling them into the wastebasket.

    Dear Lizistrata,
    Your care package just arrived. Thanks SOOOOOO much for the maple leaves. They almost made me cry.
    Wistfully yours,
    Ruby
    PS. Ray’s not succumbing to Amber’s scuzzy charms, is he? Keep reminding him how wonderful I am.
    PPS.
Am
I wonderful I’m feeling insecure today·.

    I’m in the Middle of Writing Yet Another E-mail to My Late Mom
    Demanding to know why on earth
she ever even married He-who-shall-not-be-mentioned
in the
first
place,
when there’s a tap at my door.
    I yank it open, hoping it’s Max.
But, naturally, it’s the scumdad,
looking all hangdog and pitiful.
Sort of like he did in
Sing to the Wind
,
in that scene where he finds out
that Meg Ryan is dumping him
for his best friend.
    He says that he knows I’m angry.
And that he doesn’t blame me in the slightest.
And that if he was me,
he’d feel exactly the same way.
But that he wishes I’d give him a chance to