Read Online The Quick & the Dead by Joy Williams - Free Book Online Page B

edge of the school grounds, a paper fluttered from a mock orange tree. It was a blurry picture of a cat with a little conical birthday hat on its head.
    LOST WHITE CAT NAMED TU-TU .
TU-TU IS DEAF!
    “Please, Alice.”
    “I am not responsible for Tu-Tu’s disappearance.”
    “Oh, please please please,” Annabel begged.
    “I’ve never seen that cat before in my life.” Alice looked into the cat’s crazed photocopied gaze. Surely it had been the indignity of the hat that had caused Tu-Tu to seek a different life.
    “Please,” Annabel was saying, “promise me you won’t kill cats for the time being.”
    Trying to make the world just and natural only makes it more unjust and more unnatural, Alice thought. “Okay,” she said.
    “I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown for a second. Everything was pale, this blinding pale and … trembling. Is there any place around here we can get some bottled water?”
    “Sure,” Alice said.
    “The kind that’s treated by reverse osmosis and enhanced with minerals? That’s the superior kind. You have to look on the label.” After a while, she said, “That poor Candy.”
    “I think not being born is ecologically responsible,” Alice said. She wasn’t about to go all soft over Candy. “It has more sense than its mother.”

8
    A nnabel wanted to commemorate her mother’s birthday by having a nice dinner party for just the three of them, her mother and father and herself, with lamb chops and candles and some lovely dessert.
    “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Carter said.
    “I think some ritual restored to our lives would be nice, Daddy. I want to share some of my memories of Mommy with her. If you don’t share memories, they’ll disappear, and we’re responsible for what we forget, Daddy.”
    Carter loved his daughter deeply, but the thought that she might be a little simple occurred to him frequently. Hadn’t Ginger insisted on painting the entire second floor in the first trimester? Hadn’t she persisted in those Bloody Marys at lunch?
    “We’ll remember her on her birthday,” Annabel said determinedly. “We’ll devote the whole dinner to her. If it works out, we’ll extend it to other holidays. We’ll set a place for Mommy and pour wine into her glass and put food on her plate.”
    Carter thought she was getting Ginger mixed up with Santa Claus. Each Christmas Eve they left some apples on the hearth for the reindeer. Plus a good strong belt of whiskey for Santa. Carter rubbed his face. “Are we really going to have lamb chops?” he asked.
    Annabel nodded; it was her mother’s favorite. Alice would kill her, of course, if she found out, but Alice didn’t have to be informed of everything. She’d tell her they’d had pasta. Personally Annabel didn’t see anything wrong with a lamb chop now and then.
    “I’ll take care of everything, Daddy.”
    Or perhaps, Carter mused, she had in mind that thing the Mexicans did. One day a year they gave the dead food and flowers and in general made a big fuss, so they’d stay put and wouldn’t bother them all the other days of the year. Suddenly he became more interested. “What can I do to help, honey?” he asked.
    “No gifts,” Annabel said.
    They dressed up and set the table nicely. At first it was a little strange, but the food was good. Annabel chattered away to Ginger about her new friends, looking fixedly at the empty chair. She told her about the pimple she’d found—she couldn’t imagine where it had come from. She told her about the new Corvette Carter had bought.
    “No, no,” he said, “she won’t approve of that.” Annabel looked at him oddly, and he laughed.
    Midway through the meal, Annabel began to cry.
    “Oh, honey,” Carter said.
    “She’s not here!” Annabel cried.
    “She’s probably not used to the house yet.”
    “I don’t expect her to really be here, Daddy. That’s not what I’m saying. That would be silly. I just don’t feel she’s listening to