Aftermath of Dreaming Read Online Free PDF Page A

I barely have my truck in park. I know she can distinguish its old American motor from all the new European ones roaming around especially since I’ve had it for years. I bought it because it was sturdy, cheap, and good to haul stuff around in. And because it reminds me of where I grew up. Not that Pass C. is filled with trucks, but it definitely is not filled with exorbitantly priced non-American sedans. Soon after I bought it, Suzanne told me that it makes me look like I am dating someone from the wrong side of the tracks and driving his truck—which made me love it even more.
    My sister-the-bride is standing in the open doorway wearing a celadon-green silk sweater that plays up the same shade in her eyes and is light to the dark of her long, straight hair. That green has always been so perfect for her that I am unable to see a garment of that color without thinking she must already own it.
    â€œThank God you are here,” she says as I walk up the sidewalk. “Was traffic a nightmare?”
    â€œYou know.” I wave my hand back and forth. LA’s love-hate relationship with traffic at its finest: hate the annoyance; love the sins it hides.
    Suzanne reaches her hands out in what I think will be a hug, so I lean forward to receive it, but she moves behind me, causing me to almost lose my balance, then takes each of my elbows in her hands, and steers me through her living room, which has morphed into a maze of nuptial adornments. She could have just led the way. Finally, we arrive at her couch and sit down.
    Suzanne and her betrothed, Matt, live in an all-white home. The only color is a forest of ficus trees in front of the living room’s large arch-shaped window. With the wedding accoutrements squaring the already excessive amount of white, the effect is blinding. I stare down at my black pants for a moment to help my eyes adjust. It reminds me of when I was a kid and would go into the darkness of our daddy’s work shed from the summer sun outside. I loved the not being able to see at first, the standing there only able to take in the strong wood and sharp metal smells, as my new environment accommodated me to it before I could illicitly enjoy its loot.
    â€œOkay. Question.” Suzanne’s slender hands sort through the alabaster objects overflowing on her coffee table. “I want to carry Mother’s prayer book, but I saw some lily of the valley that are just so perfect. Is it too much to carry both?” She holds up a small snowy tome. “Do they cancel each other out?”
    â€œOh, my God, the one from their wedding picture.” I have never seen the prayer book in real life, hadn’t even known it still existed, as if it might have intuitively combusted the minute our parents’ marriage went kaput. I take it from her hands. The gold ink spelling our mother’s maiden name is still crisp, the ivory leather pure except for a faint thumb mark on the back, like a print left behind on the safety rail of a sheer drop.
    â€œYes, that one.” Suzanne takes the coveted object back, puts it on her lap, and folds both hands on top of it.
    â€œHow’d you get it? I didn’t see it when we split her things up.”
    â€œYvette, I got Mother’s prayer book because I asked her for it.”
    â€œAfter the accident?” My mind is frantically reconstructing our mother’s last days, trying to imagine a moment when a lucid conversation with Momma was possible, as she lay looking so unreachable in that hospital bed.
    â€œNo, God, I did not take a dying woman’s prayer book. Honestly. I asked her for it ages ago when I was twelve and she let me have it then. I knew I would carry it before you.”
    â€œOh.” My sister has always had a propensity for planning ahead that seems to me a particularly unfair trait when it involves items thatother people (meaning me) are not even aware they should be thinking about. She is the only person I know