Read Online This Must Be the Place: A Novel by Kate Racculia - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kate Racculia
Tags: Fiction, Contemporary Women
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that signified the conclusive judgment on Arthur Rook.
Roberta Draper had lived at the Darby-Jones all Oneida’s life and all of Mona’s as well. She was eighty-seven years old and the very last of the Drapers, who had once owned the largest dairy farm in Ruby Falls. She was so pious Oneida wondered why she never became a nun. She had lived the life of a nun, with or without the habit—she had never married, kept herself cloistered in her rooms, and made no secret of her disapproval of everything: chiefly, Mona’s decision to raise a child without a husband and civilization at large’s decision to become a cesspool of sin, flesh, and tabloid magazines, to which, despite reviling them, Bert was utterly addicted. Mona would pick up a copy of the
National Enquirer
or
Us Weekly
whenever she went to the grocery store and leave it in a highly visible location for Bert to pick up, condemn, and eventually take back to her room to peruse. Maybe that’s why she never became a nun, Oneida thought. Bert was excellent at recognizing sin but terrible at resisting it.
Bert was mobile for a crone pushing ninety; she walked with a cane but she didn’t really need it. She liked having something to announce her presence, and the cane’s sharp clomping could be heard throughout the house whenever Bert was on the move. There were five separate rooming quarters in the Darby-Jones, two with their own baths. Bert had one of these, and it comprised the majority of the top floor. Mona had offered to move her into the second-floor rooms-plus-bath—the space Arthur Rook now rented—but Bert had insisted: all she needed was her cane, and she could manage all four flights of stairs quite well, thank you very much. The end result was that Oneida, Mona, Anna, and Sherman would be sitting at a dinner table full of cooling food as they listened to Bert’s cane clomping closer and closer, a blip of archaic sonar, until finally—finally—Bert Draper would shuffle into view, gush that they needn’t have waited for such an old bag of bones, but radiate pleasure that she had, in fact, managed to teach the younger generationsthe importance of manners, of propriety, and, most of all, of self-restraint.
General conversation moved from Arthur Rook to other topics too mundane for Oneida to bother paying attention to. She watched as Bert chewed her lasagna and stared into space. There was something about the methodical working of her jaw that made Oneida think the lasagna was incidental, that Bert was really chewing on the puzzle that was Arthur Rook; from the look on her face, it tasted vile.
By Thursday, Arthur Rook was presumed dead. In a running gag instigated by Mona, mother and daughter were going to have to kick down his door, haul out his corpse, and drag it down the driveway for the trash guys to pick up. Oneida didn’t know why this was the funniest thing she’d heard in forever, but it was—she lost it every time Mona described how the two of them would have to heave his lifeless body down both flights of stairs, arms and limbs flopping like carp, and how, by the time they got to the first landing, they’d be so fed up they’d just fold him into a ball and roll him the rest of the way down.
Oneida was always the first to crack; she couldn’t help it. She’d tuck her chin down, squeeze her eyes shut, and press her lips close together, but a laugh would always burst through the dam, strangled and sharp: a goose honking into a trombone, as Mona had once described it. And Mona would be smiling at her, beaming even, but otherwise a paragon of control in the face of abject hilarity. She didn’t know how Mona did it—how she could be so ridiculously hilarious and never laugh at her own jokes. All she knew was that Mona was the only person who ever made her laugh, really laugh, and she remembered how much she loved her mother—really loved her—every time it happened.
“So what do we think his problem is?” Oneida asked. “Other than
Roberta Draper had lived at the Darby-Jones all Oneida’s life and all of Mona’s as well. She was eighty-seven years old and the very last of the Drapers, who had once owned the largest dairy farm in Ruby Falls. She was so pious Oneida wondered why she never became a nun. She had lived the life of a nun, with or without the habit—she had never married, kept herself cloistered in her rooms, and made no secret of her disapproval of everything: chiefly, Mona’s decision to raise a child without a husband and civilization at large’s decision to become a cesspool of sin, flesh, and tabloid magazines, to which, despite reviling them, Bert was utterly addicted. Mona would pick up a copy of the
National Enquirer
or
Us Weekly
whenever she went to the grocery store and leave it in a highly visible location for Bert to pick up, condemn, and eventually take back to her room to peruse. Maybe that’s why she never became a nun, Oneida thought. Bert was excellent at recognizing sin but terrible at resisting it.
Bert was mobile for a crone pushing ninety; she walked with a cane but she didn’t really need it. She liked having something to announce her presence, and the cane’s sharp clomping could be heard throughout the house whenever Bert was on the move. There were five separate rooming quarters in the Darby-Jones, two with their own baths. Bert had one of these, and it comprised the majority of the top floor. Mona had offered to move her into the second-floor rooms-plus-bath—the space Arthur Rook now rented—but Bert had insisted: all she needed was her cane, and she could manage all four flights of stairs quite well, thank you very much. The end result was that Oneida, Mona, Anna, and Sherman would be sitting at a dinner table full of cooling food as they listened to Bert’s cane clomping closer and closer, a blip of archaic sonar, until finally—finally—Bert Draper would shuffle into view, gush that they needn’t have waited for such an old bag of bones, but radiate pleasure that she had, in fact, managed to teach the younger generationsthe importance of manners, of propriety, and, most of all, of self-restraint.
General conversation moved from Arthur Rook to other topics too mundane for Oneida to bother paying attention to. She watched as Bert chewed her lasagna and stared into space. There was something about the methodical working of her jaw that made Oneida think the lasagna was incidental, that Bert was really chewing on the puzzle that was Arthur Rook; from the look on her face, it tasted vile.
By Thursday, Arthur Rook was presumed dead. In a running gag instigated by Mona, mother and daughter were going to have to kick down his door, haul out his corpse, and drag it down the driveway for the trash guys to pick up. Oneida didn’t know why this was the funniest thing she’d heard in forever, but it was—she lost it every time Mona described how the two of them would have to heave his lifeless body down both flights of stairs, arms and limbs flopping like carp, and how, by the time they got to the first landing, they’d be so fed up they’d just fold him into a ball and roll him the rest of the way down.
Oneida was always the first to crack; she couldn’t help it. She’d tuck her chin down, squeeze her eyes shut, and press her lips close together, but a laugh would always burst through the dam, strangled and sharp: a goose honking into a trombone, as Mona had once described it. And Mona would be smiling at her, beaming even, but otherwise a paragon of control in the face of abject hilarity. She didn’t know how Mona did it—how she could be so ridiculously hilarious and never laugh at her own jokes. All she knew was that Mona was the only person who ever made her laugh, really laugh, and she remembered how much she loved her mother—really loved her—every time it happened.
“So what do we think his problem is?” Oneida asked. “Other than
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