Becoming Abigail Read Online Free Page B

know? She knew the right way to conduct herself,” he said. Then, noticing her hair for the first time, he let out a long sigh. “What have you done to your hair? What have I done to deserve this? And why are you wearing all that makeup?”
    “What do you care!”
    “Abigail!”
    “Which one, Dad?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “This is me, Dad. Me!”
    “I know that. How could I not?” he asked. “You look just like your mother. Now, how about making dinner while I go and change?”
    The chair made a scraping sound when he pushed back from the table and stood up. As he left the room, he patted her arm and smiled.
    It happened while she was cooking. She looked up and out of the window over the sink. In the soft light of dusk she saw a stranger’s face reflected back at her: a full head of hair, mascaraed eyelashes, and a red gash of a mouth. She was so shocked she dropped the plate she was washing.
    “Are you all right?” her father called out.
    “Fine,” Abigail mumbled, reaching for the sharp paring knife in the ornately carved wooden rack by the side of the sink. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, she hacked it off. She kept hacking, the hair piling up by her feet, until she had a rough crew cut. Then, reaching into the cupboard above her head, she took out her mother’s set of ten glass dishes with lids and placed them carefully on the table.
    Rushing upstairs, she grabbed a tampon, some cherry red lipstick, a pair of frilly panties, nail polish, and a picture of Tom Cruise torn out of a magazine. Returning to the kitchen, she put each of the items into a separate dish and covered it. Then she put some locks of her hair into another, some whole dried chilies into another, rice, a washing glove, and nail clippings that looked like drops of dried blood into the last one. Then she arranged the dishes on the kitchen table in a pyramid. When he came down for dinner a few minutes later, her father took in her wild look and the insane display on the table. He looked all crumpled and creased like an empty cigarette packet.
    “Those were your mother’s marriage dishes,” he said finally, as though this desecration was too much.

Now
    VIII
    Of course she realized that there was the flow and the intent, hers and the river’s, and that no amount of thought, or nostalgia, could change this thing at the center of her desire. And how many ways can you describe a landscape? As though the quantities would somehow add up to a math of possibility, a chance even. But such things lay in the realm of luck and were available only to horses and their antagonists.
    The neon tower of the Haywood Gallery flashed at her from across the water, part of the ugly South Bank Arts complex. It had never looked so beautiful. The millennium wheel, or the London Eye as it had been officially christened, sat dark and towering like a birthday wish grown too big and abandoned by some child.
    She and Derek had taken a ride down the river to Greenwich, from the pier less than five minutes up river, near the cart that sold plastic scale models of The Needle and the sphinxes. They ignored the tour guide’s monologue, just happy to be together in the incredible joy of a spring day. Getting off at Greenwich, they explored the Cutty Sark. The cutter, retired from its days as a trade ship carrying spices and tea between India and London, was now a museum. They had stumbled into each other in the narrow gangways giggling like a pair of school kids. Derek led her through the magic of Greenwich’s famous market, every bit as romantic as an Arabian souk. Carefully, as if more rode on the decision than was visible, Derek chose an antique-looking silver necklace with a large amber pendant. Against the old tarnished silver, the amber looked like a blob of honey melting on dirty ice. She let him put the necklace on her and lead her up through Greenwich Park, past trees that looked older than the ghost stories they had spun, up the hill to the observatory. Below