A Mother's Love Read Online Free Page A

living room: magazines were neatly stacked in corners, the books were in alphabetical order. When she opened the refrigerator, it sparkled with fresh fruit and vegetables. The roaches were a part of life in New York (the neighbor’s roaches, really, Patricia said), but everything else was clean, white. I thought of the dishes I’d left in the sink, the pile of newspapers by the door. The cartons of take-out food in the fridge that I dipped into for dinner. “Some days,” I said, “I don’t even get outside.”
    â€œI can imagine,” Patricia said, making me wonder if she could. “I’m overworked too. It’s not that easy to get together anymore.” Patricia and I used to see each other almost every week. We’d meet somewhere midway for a quick dinner or a six o’clock film. But since Bobby was born, she had come uptown only twice—once to the hospital and another time shortly after I brought him home. Though we spoke often, we hadn’t seen each other in several weeks.
    She’d gotten home late and was rushing to fix dinner. Brown rice was already cooking, and she grabbed some carrots and broccoli, slicing and dropping them into a steamer. When she took out two white fish fillets, my heart sank. I was so hungry these days. I had to eat frugally to save money. Still, I was eating, but it seemed I could never getenough. Even though I hardly ate—and couldn’t afford—red meat, I had been hoping for steak, lamb chops, something to fill me up. Instead, I munched on the cheese and crackers, and sipped the seltzer Patricia had placed before me.
    She moved quickly through the motions of salting the fish. She hadn’t had time to change after work, and she still wore a skirt and sneakers. Patricia was one of those women who walk home as if they are on military drill. “I’m always late,” she complained. “The city brings me down. I’m always in a hurry, but where am I going?”
    â€œIt’s true,” I agreed. “I used to feel that way too, that I didn’t know where I was going. But now, well, I think I know.” Bobby began to whimper and I tried to distract him with a rattle, but he cried in earnest and my milk started to flow. He stared at me, angry at being denied, through his black eyes—his father’s eyes. It was difficult for me to look at him and not think of Matthew, though I tried not to. In some ways it might have been easier if I’d had a girl. I could not bathe Bobby or change him—I could not look at his naked body—and not think about the man who fathered him.
    Tentatively I picked him up, undoing my blouse. Bobby moved his head up and down as he struggled to reach my breast. “I wish you’d come to see us more,” I said to Patricia.
    â€œOh, I try, but you know. Everyone’s so busy.Our lives are so demanding.” I nodded, then frowned. Bobby clamped down, his mouth firmly on my breast. Lately I didn’t seem to be so busy anymore.
    Patricia saw me wince. “It hurts?”
    â€œA lot,” I said. “They just don’t put it in any of the books.”
    Patricia nodded as she set the table, sorting through the knives and forks. Patricia had nice things. She had real silverware and porcelain plates. She had silver spoons for ladeling gravy and soups. She had things that had belonged to her family. Antique furniture from her aunt’s farmhouse. Her bed was the one her grandmother was born in. When she married Scott, her mother had given her the family linen, the chest that had held her own trousseau. On her dresser were pictures of large groups of people—the extended family—taken at their annual reunions. In some a yacht was moored in the background, waves lapped a Maine shore. Other reunions were held on the family farm, the one they still owned upstate. It had a name. Shady Creek. “This weekend,” Patricia would say,