Read Online Open House by Elizabeth Berg - Free Book Online Page A

her coat, and then, shyly, “Hello. Welcome.”
    Lydia smiles, takes my hand between her own. Her hands are warm, strong; not dry and fragile feeling, as I had thought they would be. My hands, however, reflect my nervousness—I know they’re ice-cold. I lead the women into the kitchen, set out cups and plates for them, slice the banana bread.
    After we sit down, Lydia pushes a small package toward me. “For you,” she says. And then, when I start to protest, she says, “It’s nothing. Very small.” I unwrap crystal salt and pepper shakers, start to say thank you when I am interrupted by a high-pitched “Yoo-hoo!” At first I’m confused, thinking the moving man has an awfully high voice, but then there is my mother, coming into the kitchen. She is wearing a lavender work-out suit, and her coat is open, car keys in her hand.
    “Ma!”
    “Well, you never answer the phone. I was on my way back from my aerobics class—” She looks pointedly at Marie and Lydia.
    “Lydia, please meet my mother, Veronica Reynolds. Mom, this is Lydia Fitch, my new roommate; and this is her daughter, Marie Howard. It’s moving day—I guess you saw the truck. . . .”
    Veronica comes to the table to shake both women’s hands. Her bracelets jangle busily. “Very nice to meet you, what a surprise.” She doesn’t say
surprise
like it’s a surprise. She says it like it’s a dirty trick.
    “Banana bread?” Lydia asks, offering her own untouched plate, and Veronica hastily declines. “I’m on my way home, really, just dropped in to see how my daughter’s doing. But apparently she’s doing just fine, isn’t she, got two roommates already!”
    “Just one,” Marie says.
    “Pardon?”
    “Just one, I’m not moving in. I’m just here to help my mother get settled.”
    “I see. Where’s Travis?”
    “Shopping,” I say. “He went to the mall with Billy Silverman and his mother to find some pants he
must
have. All the rage.”
    “You let him buy his own clothes now?”
    “I have for some time.”
    “Uh-huh. Well! Something
else
I didn’t know.” She looks at Lydia. “Funny, isn’t it, how you can not know so much about those you’re closest to? Okay, I’d better be going, I don’t want to stay too long. Not even invited in the first place, of course.”
    “Ma. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I’m sure you know that.”
    “Oh no. Really, I can’t. A lot to do, for tonight. I’m having a man over for dinner. I thought, well, why not lobster, something sort of elegant? And I just found something out about lobster, too. A woman at the gym told me if you slice open their claws after they’re cooked and hold them upside down over the sink, the water will run right out. Then there’s no need for bibs covering up your cleavage.”
    A polite silence at the table. Then Veronica tells Lydia, “Well. I hope you’ll be very happy here.” She turns to me. “Want to walk me to the car?”
    At the door, we meet King, carrying an armload of clothes and a pole lamp. He nods, smiling, and my mother pulls back to let him pass. “Well!” she says, after we get outside. “Don’t get
him
mad at you! A few pounds getting a free ride there!”
    “He’s quite nice, really.”
    She climbs into her car, pulls down the visor to check herself in the mirror. “I wonder something,” she says.
    “What?”
    She adjusts her bangs, leans in closer to the mirror, wipes away a smudge of eyeliner. “I just wonder if you could give me one reason why I couldn’t have lived here with you instead of a total stranger. Who’s
old
.”
    Let’s see, I think.
One
reason?
    She looks at me. “I mean, your own mother. I just wonder what you could have been thinking that you wouldn’t ask me first.”
    “Oh, Ma, this all came about accidentally, all of a sudden. I didn’t plan it. Besides, I don’t know if it’s such a good idea for mothers and daughters to live together after a certain age. Do you, really? I mean, if you