Mother Box and Other Tales Read Online Free Page A

discarded by the plant's swelling seeds. She and the Mrs. Whites sat in the front window beneath the air conditioning vent and watched cars sweep back and forth on the causeway like water bugs. Occasionally a truck would pass and they could see the bridge dip and sway below its weight, bob for long minutes afterward in a kind of gracile indecision.
    “How many, do you think, if the bridge collapsed?” Dannie would ask. “How many if it happened right now?”
    And the Mrs. Whites would laugh, one following the other, descending notes spilling creakily out to the corners of the crowded room.
    She and the Mrs. Whites sifted through the store's objects. An inventory of unusual shells, carved do-dads, glass balls into which were blown smaller glass balls and inside those: bubbles, pin-points of emptiness which caught the light. Everything was covered with a thin layer of dust, yellowed as if cellophane had been slid over her eyes. She and the Mrs. Whites picked out fabrics from the store's back room. Sateen, pink polka-dotted organdy, a slick of water-shot silk that could be pinned and twisted into bunting, a romantic little spill of lace. It was going to be a party. She and the Mrs. Whites planned to drink mint lemonadeand eat finger foods. Red sausages wrapped in pastry dough, a blonde pudding studded with figs. They would wear dresses, little ankle socks. She imagined the Mrs. Whites fooling around in the sandy loam in their ankle socks, a stiff frill of lace cupping their ankle bones, tasteful plastic plates of cake they could gesture with, should they so choose, toward the dais or the horizon, the little box cozened in flowers and fabrics, the bridge flanked by its attendant gulls dipping and bowing in the evening light. Perhaps there would be an exigency planned for nightfall. Tiki-torches, a fire pit. Why not braziers placed at thoughtful intervals along the path back to the parking lot? Dannie loved the idea of shadows lapping against the stones all the way down the crooked hill. Like the sound of the bay lapping. Little waters, nothing really. An eddy, a shallow. The storm already passed safely out to sea.
    And then she had the babies.
    Then she had both of her babies.
    Both of her babies had then been born.
    Sylvia did not understand why they were still talking about this. It had been months and the babies were fine. A boy and a girl, both sleeping in the stroller and healthy seeming if small, their sharp faces screwed up against the fitful light. There had been something wrong with the boy's legs. They had curved in a strange way, the feet coming together below his torso like another set of hands, the way she imagined a baby monkey's feet would bend to clasp. Sylvia had found this charming and the baby boy did not seem bothered by it. In their earliest days, Dannie had invited Sylvia to the house to marvel over the babies, both stretching fretfully in one crib, and the boy had kicked off his blankets and clapped his strange feet together. The look on his face made Sylvia feel he was threatening her somehow, giving her a glimpse of his proud, severe future, but he was an infant—only a few weeks old—and she knew his face bore no indication ofhis emotions. Still, Sylvia liked the baby boy. Even now that his legs were encased in braces, the soft bones being bent straight, she preferred him to his sister who was plump and creamy, her joints banded with rosy folds of skin. The girl yawned prettily in the stroller, her mouth as neat as a cat's, and when she pressed her lips back together and tucked her soft chin against her neck, Sylvia thought she could see some shade of the girl's adulthood cross her face, some shadow even of her old womanhood. The crepe neck wrinkling into her collar, the sweetheart chin soft as a dumpling. She would always look this way, Sylvia thought, pretty and vulnerable, soft and tempting.
    Sometimes Dannie would call Sylvia over and have her hold one or the other of the babies to keep them