Mom! Don't Pull The Curtain! novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Greenhouse

Mom was standing inside a small glass greenhouse at the back of Stanley's yard.

He had built it for her in August.

I had not known that either.

She sat on an upturned bucket among the seedling trays, and she patted the one beside her.

I sat.

The glass was fogged on the inside, and the whole space smelled of tomato leaves and wet soil.

"He gave me this," she said, "and I let him think I was going to tell you about it."

"You could have."

"I could have told you a lot of things."

She picked a leaf off a seedling and turned it in her fingers.

"Did he force you?" she said.

"No."

"Did he threaten you? Any patient thing? Any grade, or a bill?"

"Mom. No."

"Do you want him?"

I looked at the glass.

"Yes," I said. "And I hate it."

"Good," said Mom. "That's an honest answer."

She dropped the leaf.

"I'm going to tell you something, and you can't laugh."

"Okay."

"Your father and I had a very good marriage," she said. "But he died four years ago, and after that nobody touched me. Not once. Four years. I forgot I had hands."

I stared at her.

"Then Stanley held the door of the hardware store, and I nearly cried in the plumbing aisle."

"Mom."

"So I am not the person to tell you it's wrong to want somebody."

She said it fiercely, and her eyes were wet.

"I'm only angry about two things. That he did it with a doctor's hands, and that he did it with me in the room."

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