Day Twenty-Seven: Another Excerpt
Posted by missed on July 6, 2008
While her suitcase lies threadbare and still packed, Karen lies in bed and listens to her mother talking about her through the wall. This is all that she has left of her life: a suitcase full of pictures and a house full of rumors.
“Poor girl,” she hears, only slightly muffled by the flower-print fabric wallpaper. “thank goodness she’s home, after what happened…”
When she was younger, hotter, she would go to bed early and sit, just listening to her parent’s conversation as they talked about her. Only when the subject changed, if it did, would she fall asleep.
“… such a sweet thing, couldn’t have asked for a better daughter you know, but couldn’t find a good man to save her life…”
A good man to save her life. Karen rolls onto her belly, like she did with John so she wouldn’t wake him with her wriggling, and wonders what her parents talked about while she was away. Looking back with older eyes, she understands that she couldn’t have been the only topic of conversation, just the one she paid attention too. Of course, now she was the center of attention in the same way a corpse is at a funeral.
The tears come, too easily. Perfunctorily.
She wraps a pillow around her head, and fixates on the window.
“I’m just glad she’s home. ‘Specially with the storms coming.” Through the pillow. She could never drown out what other people thought of her.
