After the Fog

After the Fog Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: After the Fog Read Online Free PDF
Author: Kathleen Shoop
Tags: Fiction, Historical
speck of Sara Clara’s spittle that landed on her lip. She shook her head, unusually speechless.
    Sara Clara smiled. She couldn’t hold it in any longer, her hands flailed through the air. “I never see the sun. Everything’s filthy. A cesspool! All I get is yelled at all day by you and—”
    Rose crossed her arms. “If this cesspool’s too much for you, you could start by simply picking up this room.” She tossed a lump of Buzzy’s dirty work clothes to the side with her foot. Under the pile were Unk’s clothes, Leo’s, and Henry’s, too. Sara Clara swallowed hard. Her secret was out.
    “You told me you finished the laundry yesterday,” Rose said. “I should have known. Today’s ironing day. How are you going to iron when there’s nothing to iron?” Rose rubbed her forehead. “Everyone has to do their part.” She shook her head, fist clenched at her side. “Just go back to bed. Or redd-up this mess. Just cut the bullshit. All that moaning. I thought you were crying again, that’s why I came in. I was being sweet.”
    Like weather that snapped from stormy to cloudy with no warning, Sara Clara felt her anger evaporate into worthlessness. She had tried so hard to make Rose like her. Sara Clara dragged toward the bed, her shoulders hunched and feet shuffling, as though she were suffering from flu. This was Rose’s idea of sweet?
    Rose stepped over the clothing, bent and snatched something from the floor and stretched it in front of Sara Clara’s face. “A guest towel? There’s goddamn lipstick on this thing. Unk bought these…I asked you not to do that…I told you where we store your linens.” Rose’s jaw clenched and Sara Clara thought she saw tears welling in her sister-in-law’s eyes.
    Rose met Sara Clara’s gaze. “You’re not wiping your ass with these, are you?”
    Sara Clara flopped back on the bed.
    “Stop blubbering,” Rose said.
    Sara Clara sat cross-legged, tossing her hands upward, letting them fall and lifting them again. “I’m turning into a vampire bat, a rodent! In the mirror yesterday I swore my teeth were bucking out like a rat! This mill shift business is a little hard. Yes! I’m a little bazooka right now.” She dabbed her tear-drenched cheeks with the bedspread and sniffled.
    “I’m lonely, Rose. You get to run all over town being a nurse and I’m stuck here. Don’t you see? I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to understand what it feels like to live with people who don’t even like you, don’t want you there. To have no one who cares you’re alive?”
    Rose looked away and kicked a dirty sock to the side. Sara Clara thought she might have actually hit a soft spot, a point of entry into the heart of Rose Pavlesic—if she had one at all. Maybe Rose could understand? Sara Clara leaned toward Rose, waiting for an apology; just a whisper of commiseration would have meant a lot.
    Rose finally met Sara Clara’s gaze. “Pull it together. You’ll waken little Leo. You’re not a child.”
    Sara Clara leaned forward on the bed, wishing Rose would mother her. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
    Rose drew back. “Scared of what? Sleep? Cleanliness?”
    “Every time Buzz goes into the mills, I think he’s not coming out.”
    Rose ran the guest towel through one palm and then the other. “He’s fine. He’s got nine lives. At least. No, he’s roach-like. He could live through Hiroshima.”
    Sara Clara’s shoulders drooped.
    Rose stepped closer. Sara Clara leaned in, expecting an embrace.
    Rose squeezed Sara Clara’s shoulder then patted it. “Everything’s fine with Buzzy. He’s fine.” She stepped backward toward the door, stumbling over clothes.
    Sara Clara felt as if Rose was taking the oxygen in the room with her.
    “Look,” Rose said, stopping. “You have to block out the fear. Just do what you need to do and don’t think about what might happen if the worst comes along.”
    Sara Clara should have felt comforted by Rose’s words, but instead she grew
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