Read Online Suburban Renewal by Pamela Morsi - Free Book Online

discounting all that we had done for her in the four years we’d lived in the garage apartment.
    His attitude made Sam furious. He was ready to pack up and move into our car rather than spend another night in the little apartment that had been our home for so very long. I insisted that we had to have a place to go before we left.
    I spent the next morning looking at rental properties. I didn’t see anything that really felt like a home, but there were a couple of possibilities that I could probably bear to live in.
    It was a gray day. The weather had turned and the wind blew through my coat. If I was cold, I figured the kids were shivering. We went to the drugstore to warm up. It was not really a good idea to interrupt the workday at Maynard Drug, so I made sure that we didn’t do it often enough to wear out our welcome.
    Dad was delighted to see us. He so rarely got to see Lauren and Nate when my mother was not around. He took them to the back, entertaining them while I stepped behind the soda counter to pour myself a cup of coffee. The saucer clanked loudly upon the marble, but it was a familiar sound. The drugstore was as much a part of my childhood as home or school. Every afternoon throughout the elementary grades, I came here to sweep up. By high school I was working two evenings and Saturdays.
    The place was like an archeological site turned upside down. Near eye level it was a 1980s pharmacy with all the brightly labeled cold remedies and glossy magazines that represented. A little higher, however, were the sleekly modernistic plastic clocks of the sixties and the pants-down Coppertone advertisement and rock-and-roll motifs of the fifties. Up next to the fifteen-foot ceiling were sepia-toned panoramic photographs of Lumkee as a raw boomtown. There was even a brightly painted Gibson girl sipping a Coca-Cola.
    I took my usual behind-the-counter seat on the Dr. Pepper cold box, leaving all eight chrome-and-vinyl bar stools available for paying customers.
    A minute later my brother came up and joined me.
    â€œI’ve always heard it’s bad to drink alone,” he said, gesturing toward the coffeepot.
    I poured him a cup and set it and the little one-serving cream container in front of him.
    â€œIf you’d spent the morning driving around Lumkee with Raylene Wallace, you’d be looking to drown your sorrows as well.”
    He feigned abject horror and then laughed.
    Mike had a great laugh. He and I looked a lot alike. Everybody said so. But somehow, it looked better on him. With honey-brown hair and green eyes, Mike was six foot two, long and lean, with ruggedly handsome features and a dentist-perfect smile. He’d played all the sports in high school but had settled on swimming by the time he got to college. It kept him fit and tanned. Even in the middle of winter, he drove all the way into Tulsa two or three nights a week to swim at an indoor pool where he had a membership. “So did you find the house of your dreams?” he asked.
    I shrugged. “Most of the Lumkee rental market is more like a nightmare,” I told him.
    â€œWell, maybe you should take this opportunity to actually buy a house,” he said.
    I narrowed my eyes and gazed at him speculatively. “Are you a lobbyist for Mom these days?” I asked him.
    He chuckled.
    â€œNo, she already has more influence than could ever be bought or sold,” Mike assured me. “But it does seem like a convenient time to be going after something you want.”
    I shook my head. “Sam’s business is just getting on its feet. I hate to put any more stress on him.”
    Mike was thoughtful for a moment and then he spoke in the soft, gently prodding way that he’d always used to encourage me to study hard and do my best.
    â€œBuying a house isn’t about Sam or his business,” he said. “I know this might be a radical concept, sis, but you know you could go out and get a J-O-B.”
    He