Read Online The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell - Free Book Online

horror as Jill made two mustard sandwiches, which she said she must eat instantly or die. A stage, Margaret said, and shivered as she watched Jill suck the remaining smears of mustard from her fingers. Mel roamed about the house in search of his bank passbook and the women resumed their visit. Bunny slid a pair of men’s dress slacks from the paper bag she’d brought with her. The woman who usually does alterations for Bunny is away and Bill needs the pants for Sunday, she explains. It’s his turn to usher at church, Bunny says, otherwise they wouldn’t bother going.
    “All right.” Margaret feels the heat of her answer rise in a blush beneath her fingers at her throat. She sees Bill North, hard and hairy, lean, and feels her body pushing up against his. “Tell Bill he can come over tomorrow, then. After work.” If she’d known the purpose behind Bunny’s visit, she wouldn’t have said yes, the children could go to the city to the picnic tomorrow.
    “Around four would be good,” Amy hears Margaret say as the screen door closes behind her. The muted light of the sun permeating the pink blanket on the window and the women’s voices are like an arm around her shoulder as she passes through the porch. They turn and look at her as she comes into the kitchen and it occurs to Amy that she might be marked in some way. Like the story she’d heard. Cain, going around with a big X on his forehead. But Margaret is frazzled and preoccupied and looks straight through her.
    Bunny puckers her tiny pink mouth and blows a kiss off the palm of her hand. “The coast is clear,” she says and winks, meaning thatshe’s run interference again, smoothed Margaret’s ruffled feathers. A faint crackle of static cuts through the music playing on the radio. Margaret’s eyes dart nervously towards it. Damn, damn, damn, Amy sees in her mother’s eyes. She’s worrying, Amy realizes, that the static signals the possibility of a storm. She knows then that there isn’t anything noticeably different about her appearance. For a second she thinks she might tell them: I have been struck by lightning. But she decides not to, believing that she would lose the experience if she told them.
Woosh
, the chair farts as she sits down at the table behind the sewing machine. She notices the crooked lines of Margaret’s sewing. How she’s repeated herself in a seam, over and over. The skin next to the ruined buckle has begun to sting. She swings her foot up and down, wanting them to notice the strange look of her buckle, but they don’t.
    Later that night Amy lies naked beneath cotton sheets, body still cool from the tepid bath Margaret had run for them before bed, a dash of Mr. Bubbles for good measure, and they’d soaked up to their necks for a full fifteen minutes each. Then, sensing a storm brewing, Margaret swished through the rooms banging windows down into place. It’s necessary to close the windows because lightning could follow the flow of air into the house and become a current of electricity that could very well turn them all into glowing lamps for Jesus if they stepped down into it, Mel has joked to frighten Amy – which, over the years, has been Mel’s and Jill’s main occupation. They have jumped from closets in dark rooms, hidden around corners and leapt out at her. Sometimes they have dropped down from a tree like ugly spiders, swinging upside down in front of her face. They make pig faces at her. Mel plays at Wolf Man, and his face changes, fangs sprout to suck her blood dry when she’s asleep. Shehas looked in the mirror in the morning and seen red dots, the puncture marks drawn on her neck with a pen. They have put a field mouse, frogs, in her bed. Two against one is never fair, Margaret chastises until blue in the face, but Margaret can’t be everywhere. Lately, though, Jill and Mel seem to have lost their interest in teasing Amy. More often their heads are together as they whisper, and it’s become difficult to uncover