She's Come Undone Read Online Free PDF Page B

of crying as they were of having babies.
    I didn’t like having Grandma there. She slept on a cot in my room and boiled all our suppers. It was unsanitary, she said, the way Daddy drank right out of the water bottle and then put it back in the Frigidaire. It was shameful that her only granddaughter had reached the age of seven without having been taught to pray. She was sick, she said, of the same old question: when was my mother coming home? She was trying her best.
    Grandma crocheted as she watched TV, frowning alternately at what was on the screen and what was in her lap. She liked differentprograms than us. On her favorite, “The Edge of Night,” a rich woman had secretly killed a man by sticking an ice pick in his neck, but a pretty woman from a poor family was on trial for the murder. “Look at Mrs. High and Mighty,” Grandma said, her eyes narrowing on the murderess who sat undetected in the courtroom gallery. “She’s as guilty as sin.”
    My talent for mimicry came in handy with Grandma. I memorized for her the Ten Commandments and a prayer called Hail Holy Queen, about people gnashing their teeth in a scary place called the Valley of Tears. Wide-eyed, Grandma promised she would see to it that I made my first Holy Communion so that I could wear a beautiful white dress and veil and eat the body of Christ. Every morning she dismissed my fears, arguing that little girls my age were too young to have Maalox and then sending me off unprotected to Mrs. Nelkin.
    The day before my mother was due at last to come home from the hospital, Daddy gave me permission to miss school. He and I loaded Anthony Jr.’s toys and crib and bassinet into the back of the peach pickup and drove to the dump. On the way there he told me our job was to cheer Ma up and not even mention the baby. This struck me as reasonable. It wasn’t her fault the baby was dead; it was Anthony Jr.’s own stupid fault.
    Daddy flung the new mint-green furniture onto a pile of old mattresses and empty paint cans and got back into the truck, breathing hard. He drove fast over the rutty dump road and I bounced against the seat and door. Seagulls flew out of our way; people stood up from their garbage to watch us. I looked back at Anthony Jr.’s unused things receding quickly from us and understood for the first time the waste of his life.
    My father drove toward Fisherman’s Cove.
    â€œOh, no, not her again,” I complained. “How long is this going to take?”
    But instead of turning in at the bottom of the long driveway on Jefferson Drive, Daddy went right past it, then took a different road.
    He parked at the vacant boat launch. We walked out onto a rickety dock and stood, side by side. The cold spring breeze snapped his nylon windbreaker.
    â€œSee out there?” he said. He pointed to the ripply gray water of Long Island Sound. “Once when I was a kid about your age, I saw a whale right out past that red buoy. It was headed south and got confused. Stuck in the shallow water.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œNothing bad. Swam around for a couple of hours with everybody looking at it. Then, at high tide, a few of the bigger boats drove in and nudged it back to sea.”
    He sat down on one of the pilings looking sick and sad and I knew he was thinking about Ma and the baby. I wanted badly to cheer him up but singing commercials seemed the wrong thing to do.
    â€œDaddy, listen,” I said. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have strange gods before thee . . .” He watched me uneasily as I recited the words of Grandma’s Commandments, as big and empty as the Pledge of Allegiance Mrs. Nelkin led each day. “. . . Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” He waited for me to finish. Then he told me it was too cold to be out there, to get in the goddamned truck.
    *   *   *
    My mother arrived