Read Online The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Meg Waite Clayton
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anything else? Poems that aren’t even about motherhood. Poems about red giants, pulsars, neutron stars, supernovae, black holes, the Rosette Nebula.
Am I anything but a mother anymore? I’m not even a daughter now.I’m a spouse, true, at least for the moment. I’m a sister who almost never sees her brothers. And I am a friend; there is that. I guess that’s the oldest decent relationship I have left, this friendship with Laney and Mia and Betts.
Who are, it appears, no better sailors than they were thirty years ago.
“The cleat, Laney! Wrap it around the cleat!” I call out, jumping to the pier before the boat swings farther and Laney either lets go of the docking line or follows it into the bay. Thank God for Mia at the helm.
Mia will sleep with Max this weekend. The thought catches me by surprise as he emerges from below deck, where I’ve forgotten all about him. The way he helps Mia while I secure the boat makes me a little … not jealous, exactly. I certainly would never sleep with Max. He’s a schlumpy dresser, for one thing, which I know doesn’t seem like it would matter once we were in bed, but it would. He dresses like Steven used to, but not: the same blue jeans, the same outdoor-guy jacket over a T-shirt, or sometimes a button-down. But he fills it all differently. Or fails to fill it. Clothes droop on Max where on Steven they wrapped up sex appeal. Max is losing his hair, which my husband, Ted, is too, of course, but Ted wears his baldness with confidence while Max clings to what’s left as if longer hair on the sides can make up for a shortage on top. Probably even Steven is balding, though; I haven’t seen him since I visited him in New York the fall of our first year, when Mia always kept her knickers on and I was the promiscuous one. I was so proud of myself back then. Or I thought I was. Imagined I was? Pretended I was? It’s hard to understand, even now, how I felt back then, why I claimed to be the girl I did.
Mia looks like she needs a baggie even more than that miniature Sonnets did the last time we arrived here: her hair is blown every which way, in short, thinnish wisps that pivot around her cowlick. Her nose is red from the cold, and she’s got that tacky little camera at her neck. Yet she looks happy. It’s there not just in her face but also in the way she moves, in her unconscious comfort with her body. Maybe it’s the way Max sets his hand on her hip as she steps from the boat now. To steady her, of course, but the way she smiles back at him suggests there’s electricity in that touch.
I’m the one who startles as if shocked, though. Shit! Have we said anything we ought not to have said with Max aboard? We haven’t, I don’t think. We haven’t.
“Don’t drop that swanky camera in the bay, Mia. That’d be quite a loss now, wouldn’t it?” Max says with a tease in his voice that makes it clear to me, at least, that the current runs both ways. I wonder if Max’s daughter would love Mia, too, or if that’s just a Baby Bradwell thing.
As I offer a hand to steady her from boat to pier, I wonder what it would be like to be free of the expectations of a husband and children, not forever on the brink of letting everyone down. To flirt with some journalist in Madagascar, or some guide in someplace so foreign it would seem another world. A man my age or older or younger, who maybe speaks my language or maybe, more intriguingly, does not.
I wonder if Mia ever flirts with women, or even goes home with them. I don’t know why, but the idea seems less improbable than I would have imagined. The thought, I see, reflects a deeply imbedded prejudice even I can’t shake, despite all Mother’s efforts to change the way we think: the eligible bachelor vs. the old maid, or the lesbian.
Mia’s flat, sensible shoes take easily to the wood pier, her ankles where they show between slacks and shoes unstockinged, nearly as red as her nose. My own stockings are shredded to hell.
Am I anything but a mother anymore? I’m not even a daughter now.I’m a spouse, true, at least for the moment. I’m a sister who almost never sees her brothers. And I am a friend; there is that. I guess that’s the oldest decent relationship I have left, this friendship with Laney and Mia and Betts.
Who are, it appears, no better sailors than they were thirty years ago.
“The cleat, Laney! Wrap it around the cleat!” I call out, jumping to the pier before the boat swings farther and Laney either lets go of the docking line or follows it into the bay. Thank God for Mia at the helm.
Mia will sleep with Max this weekend. The thought catches me by surprise as he emerges from below deck, where I’ve forgotten all about him. The way he helps Mia while I secure the boat makes me a little … not jealous, exactly. I certainly would never sleep with Max. He’s a schlumpy dresser, for one thing, which I know doesn’t seem like it would matter once we were in bed, but it would. He dresses like Steven used to, but not: the same blue jeans, the same outdoor-guy jacket over a T-shirt, or sometimes a button-down. But he fills it all differently. Or fails to fill it. Clothes droop on Max where on Steven they wrapped up sex appeal. Max is losing his hair, which my husband, Ted, is too, of course, but Ted wears his baldness with confidence while Max clings to what’s left as if longer hair on the sides can make up for a shortage on top. Probably even Steven is balding, though; I haven’t seen him since I visited him in New York the fall of our first year, when Mia always kept her knickers on and I was the promiscuous one. I was so proud of myself back then. Or I thought I was. Imagined I was? Pretended I was? It’s hard to understand, even now, how I felt back then, why I claimed to be the girl I did.
Mia looks like she needs a baggie even more than that miniature Sonnets did the last time we arrived here: her hair is blown every which way, in short, thinnish wisps that pivot around her cowlick. Her nose is red from the cold, and she’s got that tacky little camera at her neck. Yet she looks happy. It’s there not just in her face but also in the way she moves, in her unconscious comfort with her body. Maybe it’s the way Max sets his hand on her hip as she steps from the boat now. To steady her, of course, but the way she smiles back at him suggests there’s electricity in that touch.
I’m the one who startles as if shocked, though. Shit! Have we said anything we ought not to have said with Max aboard? We haven’t, I don’t think. We haven’t.
“Don’t drop that swanky camera in the bay, Mia. That’d be quite a loss now, wouldn’t it?” Max says with a tease in his voice that makes it clear to me, at least, that the current runs both ways. I wonder if Max’s daughter would love Mia, too, or if that’s just a Baby Bradwell thing.
As I offer a hand to steady her from boat to pier, I wonder what it would be like to be free of the expectations of a husband and children, not forever on the brink of letting everyone down. To flirt with some journalist in Madagascar, or some guide in someplace so foreign it would seem another world. A man my age or older or younger, who maybe speaks my language or maybe, more intriguingly, does not.
I wonder if Mia ever flirts with women, or even goes home with them. I don’t know why, but the idea seems less improbable than I would have imagined. The thought, I see, reflects a deeply imbedded prejudice even I can’t shake, despite all Mother’s efforts to change the way we think: the eligible bachelor vs. the old maid, or the lesbian.
Mia’s flat, sensible shoes take easily to the wood pier, her ankles where they show between slacks and shoes unstockinged, nearly as red as her nose. My own stockings are shredded to hell.
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