Читать книгу Undressing The Moon - T. Greenwood - Страница 20

Daddy almost never came home anymore. Every night that he worked, he spent at Roxanne’s house. That was fine with me. When he was home, he just stared at the things my mother left behind. I found him once in the bathroom, holding one of her razors, the bathtub steaming with hot water and the lilac bubble soap she always used.

Before she left, my mother’s baths had been intricate rituals. I actually believed that something magical occurred each time she went into the small bathroom off the kitchen and closed the door behind her. She would leave us after dinner, while we were still cleaning our plates. My father would open another beer, Quinn would scrape whatever was left from the blue-and-white casserole dish onto his plate, and I would wonder what she was doing in there. After the dishes were done and Daddy and Quinn had retired to their respective corners of our small house, my mother would emerge in her giant red bathrobe, turbaned like a woman in a commercial.

I thought I might figure out her secrets by studying the artifacts, but there was little to go on. After she was done, I would lock myself in the bathroom as the water drained. The smell was of lilacs, even in winter. Sometimes I would close my eyes and reach into the steam; I swear I could feel the purple petals in my fingers. Along the edge of the cracked porcelain tub lay mysterious instruments, like the tools of a magician. Silver razor, clippers, tweezers. Once, I took the razor and ran it across the length of my arm. When I looked at the blade, it was full of downy hairs. I blew them off and hoped she wouldn’t know what I’d done. I was obsessed with my mother’s rituals of hand cream and pumice and perfume, because when she came out of the steamy bathroom each night, she looked like a different person. Even if Daddy had spent the whole day lying on the couch with the cool washcloth pressed against his head and a beer in his hand, after her bath, her skin glowed pink and her face looked calm. I imagined her worries swirling down the drain, like bubble soap or the sawdust that always covered our clothes.

What I loved most, though, were the bottles, the plastic containers shaped like champagne bottles, gold foil at the top, plastic corks. Inside, liquid lilacs. Every now and then I would peel a little piece of the foil off, fold it into a tiny square, and put it in my mouth. It hurt when it touched my fillings, but it was a thrilling kind of pain. I wanted my own magic ritual to take away my worries. I wanted instruments that would rid me of all of my fears. I wanted to make my world smell of lilacs, even in winter.

I would stand on the furry bath mat, still soggy from her wet feet, and look at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I’d turn from side to side, looking for my mother’s features in my face. But I could never find them: not eyes, not nose, not throat. I looked like my father. He was me. He was my birth and my death, rendered simply in his hands and in his eyes. I could see my future in his face and hear my past in his words. Watching him staring at the empty places where my mother used to be was like staring at both the self I’d already lost and the person I would become. I was grateful, in a strange way, for Roxanne. When Daddy was away, I didn’t have to stare my own sadness in the face.

By the time winter descended, touching us at the Pond with its frigid white fingers before moving south toward the lake and on into Quimby, Daddy had stopped sleeping in their old bed. Stopped coming by except to drop off a check and, every now and then, something he thought we needed.