Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Stephen Graham Jones, Robert Marasco Page B

tray, three times a day; that’s all.”
    “Who cleans up after her, what if something should happen?”
    “You heard what they said: we won’t even know she’s there.”
    “Whatever those nuts may think, an old woman needs some kind of attention.”
    “Does Aunt Elizabeth?”
    “What has that got to do with it?”
    “Does Aunt Elizabeth?” she insisted.
    “Aunt Elizabeth is different.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I know Aunt Elizabeth, which is more than you can say for Mama Allardyce.”
    “Don’t be so flip,” she said, and when he looked to see whether she had meant it seriously, she pointed left and said, “Turn here.”
    They had reached the blacktop perpendicular to the dirt road. He made the turn and caught David in the rear view mirror, his upper lip smeared with mayonnaise.
    “How’s it going, Dave?” he said.
    David said, “Fine,” and Marian turned and said, “You liked the house, didn’t you, sweetheart?”
    “It was okay.”
    Marian wiped his lip with a tissue. “And you’d learn to be a little more careful, wouldn’t you?”
    “We gonna buy it?”
    “We’d be crazy not to, don’t you think?” She was brushing his hair back from his forehead which was damp and a little red from the sun.
    “I think we should look at some of the others,” Ben said.
    Her hand rested on David’s head for a second; he moved away and she let it fall. “Why?” she said wearily. “If you don’t want that one, you obviously don’t want any of them. Like you said, you’re just out for the ride.”
    “If we find something, we’ll take it,” he said, and for the first time he really meant it, even if it had come out to pacify her. He gave her knee a reassuring squeeze, and when she remained silent, obviously brooding, he squeezed harder and repeated, “Okay, babe? Cross my heart?”
    He made the gesture and she faced front, her eyes passing somewhere under his shoulder.
    “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve found it,” she said sullenly. “I don’t want to see anything else.”
    “Come on,” he said, nodding at her bag. “Dig in and pull out that list.”
    “I don’t want to see anything else!” Marian repeated with a vehemence he had seldom heard in her before.
    When, ten minutes later, they passed through the small cluster of buildings again (there was a car parked outside the post office this time, and some activity behind the window of the general store), they were both still silent. David leaned between them and asked, “When’s the picnic?”
    “Some other time, chief,” Ben said.
    Marian continued to stare ahead, calling out monosyllabic directions until they reached Riverhead and the Expressway which eventually became jammed with traffic in both directions. At one point she reached into the picnic hamper for a shrimp salad sandwich. She unwrapped it for Ben and held a thermos cup of coffee for him while he inched past construction crews and overheated cars and, near the Nassau-Queens line, a wicked three-car smashup.
    He brought up the house once more, apologetically, and was about to catalogue his objections again, but she cut him off with a resigned “It’s forgotten.” Still, she refused to look at any other houses, and when he said, “Maybe next week then?” she shrugged and replied, “Maybe,” with little interest.
    It was after two when he pulled into the Bus Stop in front of their building. He kept the motor running and let Marian out, and David who was going upstairs for their baseball gloves and a softball.
    “Hon?” he called out to her, leaning across the seat. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”
    She looked up at the building, counted the eight floors and added two for an even, therapeutic ten, and said, “Of course I’m all right.”
    He watched her walk away without turning. “We’ll be back by four, okay?”
    “Whenever,” she said. She dodged the kids, the tricycles, the jump ropes and a ball whacking against the side of the building,