Crazy in Love by Luanne Rice

us. “It’s bitter cold.”
    “Pem, it’s nearly the Fourth of July,” I said. As she turned to Honora I saw the wet patch on the back of her nightgown and looked away.
    “Come on, let’s have breakfast,” she said.
    “I have to change her,” Honora said.
    “I’ll run upstairs and get her a clean robe,” I said. By the time I returned to the kitchen, they were already in the bathroom. Honora opened the door a crack, and I handed in the robe.
    “Goddamn it, I don’t want to change,” came Pem’s voice.
    “You have to. You’ll be warmer if you do.”
    “But I don’t want to!”
Pem shrieked.
    “Oh, Lord,” I heard my mother say wearily.
    I sat at the kitchen table, stirring my coffee, thinking about my father and Mrs. Billings. I hated to think of Honora feeling so betrayed. As a child I had always thought of her as being incredibly strong. People say that children feel responsible when their parents’ marriages go sour, break up. Sitting there at Honora’s kitchen table that summer morning, I was thinking, What did Clare and I do wrong? By the time Honora and Pem emerged, I had become a waif, the product of a broken home.
    “Don’t look so gloomy, Georgie,” my mother said. “Try to cheer her up.”
    Pem’s face was sullen. She refused to meet my gaze.
    “She’s embarrassed,” Honora mouthed silently.
    “Good morning, Pem,” I said. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
    “Beautiful,” she mumbled. Honora placed a tray with toast, juice, and coffee before Pem. Pem prodded the toast with her index finger, as though she were inspecting something vile and inedible, then stuck out her tongue. “Stinks,” she said.
    Honora pointed significantly toward her own eyebrows.
    I glanced at Pem, her white hair splendidly wild that morning. Then I cocked my head and wrinkled my nose. She looked over, interested now. “What?” she asked.
    “I was just wondering, what do you do to your brows?” I asked.
    “So many people ask me that, it’s funny,” she said, her voice rising with mirth. “I do nothing to them.”
    “But they’re so dark!”
    “Well, my hair turned gray when I was only thirty years old, but my brows stayed dark,” she said, beginning to be absorbed in the story. “People always say, ‘What do you do to your brows?’ but I do nothing!”
    “They’re just naturally dark?” I asked, trying to sound skeptical.
    “Yes! Go on!” she said, indicating that I should test for myself by rubbing them to see if any charcoal or bootblack came off on my fingers. I touched them, then held up clean hands for Honora to see.
    Pem chuckled. “So many people ask me that, and they call you a liar if you say you do nothing.” She took a bite of toast. The query had done its work. Honora and I breathed deeply. Casey, a poor eater, had had to be cajoled into each mouthful by images of planes flying into the hangar, pirates delving into the cave, here comes the pony express. Persuading Pem to eat her toast was getting to be the same sort of adventure.
    “Look out there,” Honora said. I joined her at the window. Across the lawn, at the edge of the bay, Clare was sitting at her easel. Eugene sat at her feet, drawing on the rocks with chalk.
    “A future graffiti artist,” I said.
    “He is a rascal,” Honora said. “How did Casey turn out so sweet and calm? Eugene keeps Clare on her toes. He takes after his great-grandmother.” Pem had finished her toast; we heard her rearranging the living room.
    “Did you see the portrait Clare did of the boys?” I asked. “She’s planning to give it to Donald for their anniversary.”
    “It’s a beautiful painting,” Honora said. “She caught their personalities, didn’t she? Also Eugene’s likeness to Donald. Does Eugene have a cowlick?” Honora asked, reaching for the telescope she kept on the shelf beside the toaster.
    “That’s a funny question,” I asked. “Of course he doesn’t.”
    “Because I could swear Clare painted him with one.