Read Online Thank You for the Music by Jane Mccafferty - Free Book Online Page B

father continued to work and drink and read the newspaper, my mother tended to the little kids and kept her distance. She didn’t come into my room and watch me fall asleep anymore.
    When I wanted to leave the apartment, I’d sneak a look into the hall, making sure Anne wasn’t out there.
    One day I saw her in the bakery. It was Sunday morning; I was out on my own, buying donuts. I took my number and waited in the crowd, when suddenly I heard her voice.
    â€œHi, Grace,” she said. I turned and she was right next to me, wearing her black coat, her steady eyes devoid of the warmth I had known. Somehow in my arrogance, when I’d imagined running into her, I had envisioned she’d be more forgiving.
    â€œHi,” I said, my face crimson and warm, and sorry.
    â€œI’ve missed you,” she said, “but I understand how busy you are.”
    â€œYeah,” I said, stupidly. “School and stuff.”
    Anne sighed with relief when her number was called. “See you,” she said, and approached the lit counter. Watching her back as she waited in that bakery I was filled with shame.
    It was a month or so later when I overheard my mother and Lorine one Saturday evening after the kids had all passed out on a mattress in the living room. I had been out at the playground with Albie and a bunch of other kids, and I’d come back in to check my face before we all headed to get some pizza uptown. I stood in the darkness, watching the sprawled children sleep, and listening. The pitch of my mother’s voice alarmed me.
    â€œ. . . and then he comes home and passes out and stinks up the room and snores beside me in the bed so that I plug my ears and hear my own scream bounce off the walls in my head. I used to go out to the couch before the kids ruined it. Now there’s nowhere. Nowhere. I lie there with my fingers in my ears, trying not to breathe, knowing he doesn’t love me anymore, if he ever did. Night after night, Lorine. And the days are no better.”
    Lorine sighed. “God, I wish I knew what to say,” she said. I stood there, body frozen, heart beginning to pound throughout my entire body. I was waiting for more, dreading more, but they were silent now. What my mother had said should’ve been obvious to me, and would have been had I ever had the courage or inclination to extend my imagination toward her then. And yet, what I’d overheard felt both shocking and inevitable, like something I didn’t know I’d always known. Now it was taking root in my heart, and beginning to break it.
    â€œNext time around we’ll be lesbian painters,” my mother said, breaking the silence. “Weird lesbian gals with big white pianos and no kids.”
    They laughed together.
    â€œAnd we’ll freak out little girls like Gracie,” she added.
    Another laugh.
    â€œPoor Gracie,” Lorine said, sounding unlike herself. “She’s got it all ahead of her.”
    I tiptoed past the kitchen, back to the bathroom. I would not sort it out. I’d let my mother’s sorrow sit inside me, a heaviness, an ache I’d outrun. I was busy, I had places to go, I did not need this horrible interference. I yanked on the chain that turned on the bulb above the mirror. I didn’t look so bad, really, I thought, reapplying my cherry lip gloss and forbidden mascara. I gave my long hair a defiant fifty strokes. My heart slammed inside me. I washed my hands, and bent to take a drink from the faucet, gulping down the cold water as if it could break through the new knowledge stuck in my chest.
    I went back quietly through the living room.
    â€œWho’s that?” my mother said.
    I didn’t answer her then, or ever. I’d grow up never mentioning that I’d heard a word she said. I walked quietly to the door, opened it, and ran breathlessly down the stairs and into the night, as if I were free, as if after so deliberately turning away