Read Online The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg - Free Book Online

overburdened saleswoman who asks how she can help when what she really wants is just to go home. “What is it, Laura?” she’d asked. “It” wasn’t anything; I’d just been wandering around the house. I’d simply wanted to be by her. But with my grandmother, there had to be an agenda. If you were doing nothing, you were up to no good.
    The only time she touched us kids was when we were leaving—then we got a quick hug, her face directed away from us. It was like being pressed to a wall. I’d known she was warmer to Aunt Fran’s children, and for a while it had bothered me. But soon enough I gave up on her altogether; we all did, and Steve and I always made vicious fun of her in the backseat every time we drove home from her house. Caroline laughed at what we said, but she wouldn’t join in. Neither of our parents ever reprimanded us for our behavior at those times; rather, their relaxed posture seemed to suggest they condoned it.
    My grandmother died when I was twelve, just nine months after her husband, who was really nothing more than a shadowy presence. At her funeral, I’d played hangman with Steve. As far as I was concerned, my only grandparents were my father’s parents. My mother had wept for days after her mother’s death, and when I’d asked her why she’d said, “Now there’s no chance of anything changing. Do you understand? I’m not sorry to lose her, as she was. I’m grieving for what can never be. I’m grieving for
me.
”
    Now, before anyone could ask how my father was, Aunt Fran put down her magazine and said, “He’s absolutely fine. The tests don’t show a thing. They’re going to keep him overnight just as a precaution. He can go home tomorrow.”
    I slumped onto an orange plastic sofa. “Oh, good. Good.” Again, the image of my mother in her robe.
I told you.
    “I’m going to go talk to the nurses,” Caroline said, and Steve told her to wait, he’d go with her.
    “I was sure something really terrible had happened,” I told Aunt Fran. “I was really sure.”
    “Not at all. Your mother said he ate some hot peppers last night. He can’t really do that anymore, but he just won’t quit.”
    “Mom shouldn’t buy them then.”
    “She didn’t. He did!”
    I smiled and moved over a bit so Pete could fit beside me.
    “I think I’m going to run home for a while,” Aunt Fran said. “Want me to take the kids back to your mom’s house?”
    I looked over at Anthony, who hated hospitals and had ventured no farther than the entryway to the lounge, and at Hannah, sitting nervously at the edge of a chair, her empty cheese curd container still in her hand. “What do you think, guys?” I said. “You want to go back to Grandma’s?”
    “We’ll stay if you want us to,” Anthony said, and I could hear the plea in the back of his brain:
Say no.
    “I guess they don’t really need to be here,” I told Pete. “Why don’t you go too? You might as well take them back to the fair.”
    “Can we?” Hannah asked.
    “I think maybe we should stay for just a while,” Pete said.
    “Well, go in and see him if you want,” Aunt Fran said. “But really, he’s fine. He’s mostly embarrassed. Sitting there in that silly gown.”
    “I’ll be here,” I told Pete. “Caroline and Steve will, too. You go ahead. There’s no point in all of us hanging around.”
    He stood, his hands in his pockets, deliberating. Then, “All right.” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll see you later. I’m going to go back to the fair and eat some more of the stuff that will put
me
in here next.”
    As soon as they left, Caroline and Steve came back into the waiting room. “Only one visitor at a time,” Caroline said. “Mom’s in there with him, but she said she’d be out in a minute.”
    “I’ll go in next,” I said.
    “How come you get to go first?” Steve asked.
    “Because I’m the oldest.”
    He flopped down onto a chair. “Right. I knew you were going to say that.”
    “Then