"I don't know. He was talking so..."
"What?"
"Seriously. I just got that feeling," I said.
"I won't go. I won't." she insisted. "This time. I'm going to plant my feet in cement. I've got an interview with Mr. Weinberg who owns that insurance agency on Grant Street. He's looking for a receptionist and bookkeeper and I can make a good salary. I won't go.
"Besides," she continued. "you've got to finish your senior year here. Did he actually suggest moving?"
I shook my head.
"It was just a feeling I got. Mammy."
"Um," she said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. "I should be wary. Whenever he starts going off by himself regularly on weekends and increases his drinking, it usually means something. No one can blame me for being paranoid,'" she added.
She sat there, pensive for a long quiet moment, and then she slammed her palm down on the table so hard, she made the dishes jump and clang.
"I'm not going and that's final,"
She rose and marched out of the kitchen before I could even try to calm her down. I felt guilty for putting her ill at ease and probably clawing and barking at Daddy the moment he returned from hunting.
All day long she built up her fury. I could see it in the brightening fire in her eves and could hear it in the way she pounded through the house, slammed doors, and ran the vacuum cleaner. She was pressing down so hard on the handle. I was sure she was sucking up the very foundation of the house.
Early in the afternoon, she set out for the supermarket. She asked me to go along. I was afraid even to hesitate. It was an unusually warm day for late October, with just a few puffs of cotton white clouds barely moving across the turquoise sky. The world looked so vibrant, all the colors sharp and rich in the grass, the flowers, the picket fences. Days like this encouraged people to wash their cars, cut their lawns, paint and spruce up their homes. The freshness and the sharpness around us underscored how good we both felt about our present home and how much we wanted to hold on to it.
How could he even dare to contemplate a move now?" Mommy muttered.
Once again, I emphasized that I didn't know he was for sure. It was just a feeling.
She looked at me and nodded, convinced of the worst possible scenario.
"He is." she said. "You're right on it. I live in denial most of the time and ignore all the signals until they're plopped right in my fact.
"I'll make him a duck dinner," she fumed, making it sound more like a threat. "I'll make him a duck dinner he'll never forget."
She carried her fury into the supermarket and stomped around the aisles, pushing the cart like a lawn mower, plowing anyone in her way to the right or to the left before they had to meet her head-on. When anyone said hello, she fired her hello back as if they had cursed her. Her reply of "I'm fine, thank you very much." was almost a challenge to declare otherwise. I saw some people shake their heads as we continued by.
At the checkout counter. Jimmy Slater gave me his usual big grin as he packed my mother's groceries.
"How's Miss Lewisville Foundry today?" he asked me.
"I'm not Miss Lewisville Foundry," I said for the hundredth time.
"You are to me." Jimmy insisted.
My mother glanced at him with her eyes askance and almost smiled at me as we headed out to the car. At home I helped her unpack and put away our groceries, and then I went up to my room to continue my homework. Around five o'clock. I expected to hear Daddy's Jeep pulling into the driveway with its usual squeal of tires. I leaned toward my window, which faced the front of our house, and looked down, anticipating his arrival any moment. At five-fifteen, I heard Mammy pacing in the downstairs hallway.
"If that man expects a duck dinner tonight, he'd better be here in five minutes.' she declared. "I don't serve greasy duck. It takes a few hours to make it right."
She pounded back to the kitchen and then, twenty minutes later, she returned to the living room to look out the front windows. I came down the stairway and stood in the living room doorway. She was standing there, her arms folded, glaring at the street. For a long moment, neither of us moved or spoke. Then she tamed and looked at me, her face twisted with anxiety and anger.
"I don't know why I'm surprised. Why should time matter to a man like that now? It never has before," she said.
I glanced at the miniature grandfather clock on the mantel above our small fireplace. It was now fiveforty-five. Twilight deepened. Shadows were spreading like broken egg yolks over the street.
"You go make yourself something to eat. I know you're going to the movies," Mommy told me.
I nodded and went to the kitchen, but I had very little appetite. My anxiety over what would go on when Daddy returned had turned my stomach into a ball of knotted string. Every once in a while my heart would pitter-patter like a downpour of rain against a window.