Pulling Home by Mary Campisi Page B

anticipated. He did want her though, like all the other men did, but his offer had a bit more gentleman’s flair to it. He wanted her to move to Atlanta with him and his wife and two children—he neglected to mention his marital status before that night—and become his mistress. He said he’d set me up, Mama , Corrine told her mother, tears flooding her face, voice suffocated with sobs. He’d set me up real nice. Take care of me.
    Audra too, if I wanted. More sobs. He didn’t want a wife. He already had one. When will I ever learn? Nobody wants me.
    The tears had been so hard, so consuming, Audra feared they would pour out until they sucked her mother dry, and then she’d crack open, a shriveled empty shell filled with nothing. But then the tears stopped, just like that. Corrine sniffed, swiped her hands across her face and walked to the liquor cabinet where she poured a gin, straight up, swallowed it, coughed, and poured another, and all the while Audra and Grandma Lenore watched and waited, for what, they didn’t know.
    I’m fine, Corrine said, pouring another drink. I think I’ll go lie down a while. Her voice was steady, her gaze firm as she disappeared into her bedroom, drink in hand, and closed the door.
    The next morning Grandma Lenore found Corrine in her black slip lying face
    down, an empty bottle of valium on the nightstand. Her body was cold, her lips blue.
    Three months and two days before her thirty-first birthday, Corrine Alice Valentine was dead. Dead too, was Audra’s dream of becoming part of a normal family. Only a few people attended the funeral, neighbors mostly. Mr. Cummings sent flowers but didn’t make an appearance. Stanley Osgooden did neither.
    Everything changed after Corrine’s death. Grandma Lenore shuffled more,
    clasped her rosary tighter and murmured to herself, in prayer or desperation, Audra couldn’t tell which, wondered sometimes if they were the same. The aches in the old woman’s joints settled in her knees, making walking any distance painful. Audra became the messenger and the delivery person—to the grocery store for milk and bread, the neighbor’s to borrow an egg or spool of thread, the drugstore for liniment. Mrs. Mertigan drove them to Mass every Sunday morning in her navy Caprice Classic. While other girls Audra’s age were sharing secrets at sleepovers or learning new dance steps, she tended the garden, canned the tomatoes, picked and snapped the pole beans, and baked the breads. She gathered the laundry, ironed the aprons and housedresses, dusted the maple table and chairs, and mended her own skirts. She rubbed liniment on her grandmother’s swollen knees, washed the old woman’s long gray hair twice a week and braided it into a bun on top of her head. Gradually, Audra took over the cooking too, soups and stews at first, and then roasts with homemade gravy and chicken with buttermilk dumplings.
    Grandma Lenore curled up after Corrine’s death, shriveling inside herself, one
    breath at a time until one morning, two days after Audra’s high school graduation, she died. It was a Thursday, bright and clear. Audra had just fixed Grandma Lenore oatmeal with wheat toast, settled her in her rocking chair and tucked the gold and brown afghan around the old woman’s swollen legs. Then she’d gone to the basement to pull out chicken for dinner but changed her mind and decided on beef soup instead. It took a few extra minutes to find the beef cubes and rearrange the packages, and when she returned to the kitchen, Grandma Lenore was leaning back in the rocker, mouth slack, eyes wide open.
    Grandma? But Audra knew, before she placed a hand over the old woman’s
    heart, she knew . It was then, as she clutched her grandmother’s limp hand between her fingers that the knowledge burst inside her like a cancer cell gone wild, spreading first to her gut, then her chest and finally, her brain, until every cell in her body was contaminated with it. Her family was gone and