LJ Idol Week 17 - "Scare Quotes"
She watches a tiny spider trace a path across the textured ceiling of the bathroom, and imagines a life without mandatory family dinners.
"You're not going to believe what Nancy next door said today about her daughter. She said that she caught her with some boy from another school have sex on the couch! Can you believe it?" The tick-tick-tick of her knife is a frustrating staccato against Janie's ears. Her mother has been indulging in this ritualistic mutilation of her food for the last ten minutes but has yet to take a bite. "I told her she needs to talk to that boy's mother, maybe do something about him, maybe press charges? That can't be legal, and I was asking Les about it at work and he says the same thing."
Her father nods in silent agreement, chewing his food with mechanical thoughtfulness, rocking so very slightly in his chair.
"And how was your day today Janie? Oh, wait, before you say anything, I got the most amazing deals at Costco today! Toilet paper for only ten-ninety-nine for thirty-six rolls, and this huge bottle of Tylenol for four-fifty, I think Shopper's charges twelve for the same bottle, and I got seven boxes of pasta for only five dollars. Isn't that great? Why can't the grocery stores charge the same? I hate having to go to Costco, the lineups are so long and I get terrible cell reception in there, you're waiting forever and the samples are really awful these days. Do you remember when we went there last month, Janie, and they had those little corned beef sandwiches to try?" She doesn't even wait for so much as a nod. "Well they don't have them now, and I don't get it, I mean you'd think they'd at least have something worth eating, I have allergies you know and all they do is serve that Chinese food these days."
The spider moves around the stained yellow-white cover of the ceiling fan, and she loses sight of it for a moment as she adjusts herself to be more comfortable on the cold tiled floor, as comfortable as she can be. The chill is a comfort against the hot tingle in her skin, the gnawing ache of nausea in her gut, the vertigo that swoops through her like a dragonfly tumbling for mosquitoes on a summer evening.
When she finds it again, the little arachnid is pausing, uncertain, above the shower curtain.
"May I be excused?" Janie finally asks, as her mother's Costco hits the twenty minute mark. Her voice is a quiet, gentle interruption but her mother stares at her, stunned, as if Janie just leaned over the table and slapped her. Her father, on the other hand, just looks up with tired, blank eyes.
"No, no you can't be excused," her mother says with authoritarian finality. "It's family dinner night."
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't told us about your day!"
"There's nothing to tell."
The familiar cloud darkens her mother's face, that swooping shadow that pinches the corners of her mother, forces her eyes into antagonizing slits, bunches the skin of her forehead. It's a fast transition, barely noticeable to anybody but Janie after all these years.
"You need to stop this," the woman hisses, and jabs her index finger into the air as if she wishes to skewer something. "I am tired of you being pouty and huffing through every dinner. What are you going to do, sit in your bedroom and sulk? Go down there and whine about, oh, how hard your life is, how miserable you are? You have no idea -"
"Please." She knows she shouldn't push the topic but her stomach is churning with anxiety and she feels about ready to either scream or cry, and the last place she wants to do it is at the dinner table over her mother's over-salted casserole. "Can I go?"
"Listen here, missy. I don't care what that woman at school says, or that stupid doctor they sent you to. You can't just use the fact that you're 'sick' -" She hooks her fingers in the air to accentuate the word, the light reflecting off the Mother's Pride ring that she wears with an innacurate birthstone for Janie because she didn't like how the blue topaz looked next to the emerald, "- to get out of everything. You just need to snap out of it and start acting like a normal human being, you hear me?!"
She stretches her arms to try and work out the knotting of her muscles, her hand striking the Costco-sized Tylenol bottle and sending it clattering across the floor. Her fingers spasm uncomfortably as she consents to let her arms rest, listening to the back-and-forth roll of plastic on tile as the bottle settles near the locked door.
The spider is working its way down, its gauzy legs hair-thin streaks of black on the perfect white plastic of the shower stall, and she imagines a world without the constant unease, the tension in her muscles, the overwhelming urge to flee every time her mother's car pulls in the driveway.
Bile crawls up her throat and she swallows it down, her chalk-coated and swollen tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. A giddy laugh is bubbling in her throat and she swallows that down, too, afraid to give it voice for fear that, like all of her laughter, it will turn to tears, to sobs, to hysteria.
She swallows everything and imagines a world without her mother.
The spider leaves her field of vision. She closes her eyes, and waits.