Read Online Pulling Home by Mary Campisi - Free Book Online Page A

for you. It’s about time you came.”
    “I was only out for a morning run. I had no intention of coming here.”
    The woman grabbed her arm and said, “Of course, you didn’t, dear. No one ever
    does.” She tightened her grip. “Hurry, follow me. If they see me, they’ll make me go back and I won’t be able to talk to you.”
    Audra followed the older woman toward the rear of the house, noting the bony
    shoulders, the unsteady gate, the stain on the back of the dress. She couldn’t have been more than forty-three or so, yet she looked much older. Doris stopped by the old crab tree Grandma Lenore loved and released Audra’s arm. She pulled out a pack of Salems, coughed and lit up.
    “I promised myself if I ever got out, I’d set things straight with Corrine’s
    daughter.” She puffed on her cigarette so hard her cheeks hollowed like a skeleton. “After all, it was the least I could do, seeing as I was responsible for her demise.”
    Got out? From where? “No one ever talked my mother into doing anything she didn’t want to do.” Years of empty promises and an array of men by Corrine’s side had taught Audra that much.
    “That’s where you’re wrong, child. She wasn’t always like that. Not before.”
    Pause. Puff. Doris O’Brien’s pale gray eyes scanned the street, flitted over Audra and settled on her face. “You have your mother’s eyes. Warm as a shot of whiskey on a cold night.”
    Audra didn’t want her mother’s eyes. She wanted nothing of her mother. And yet,
    since she’d arrived in Holly Springs, the comparisons hadn’t stopped.
    “Did you know she wanted to be a nun?” Doris laughed. “Didn’t see that one
    coming, did you? She loved the taste of the wafer, and the way her spirit felt like flying after confession. Said she wanted to marry God and commit her life to Him. Pure.
    Chaste.” Puff. Puff. “What? You don’t believe me?”
    “Nothing I remember about my mother was pure or chaste.” Who was this
    woman? Had she escaped from an institution?
    “You only remember the after. Corrine wanted to become a nun. That was the
    plan. We were both going to join Benedictines. Then she met Malcolm Ruittenberg. She started having feelings for him, sexual and the like. It wasn’t like she was doing anything, she was just thinking about it like any other normal teen. She went to confess to Father Benedict and the next thing I knew she told me to hell with Father, to hell with the Catholic Church.” Doris took a long drag on her cigarette and blew out a ring of smoke.
    “It was a bad time. Your grandmother talked to Pastor Richot and he agreed to meet with your mother. Things settled down after that, thank God. Then one day she turned up pregnant and word had it four or five boys could have been the father. One was even a college student.”
    “And?” Other than the nun part, nothing was a surprise.
    “I knew her. She’d never even kissed a boy, let alone allow five to touch her that way.”
    “Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought you did.”
    “I knew her. I’m saying something happened.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like somebody took something she wasn’t offering. Or she loved the one she
    offered it to and he didn’t return the love.”
    The woman spoke in circles. “Why can you only surmise? Where were you this
    whole time?”
    A sad smile crept over Doris O’Brien’s weathered face. “I was making my own
    sins.”

    ***
Alice opened the door and slipped inside. Slivers of light escaped through the
    blind slats, jetting across the bed, illuminating bits and pieces of the room. A baseball glove. A globe. A stack of Russian history books. A Yankee pennant. She didn’t need full light to know the details of her son’s room. A mother always remembered. The bed creaked as she sank onto it. They’d bought it from Sears with a bold guarantee the bed would last longer than its user. An uncomfortably true statement.
    Christian was gone, the blond boy with the