House of Blues

wasn't that, though. It
was the way she'd had visions of Sally crying, "Mommy!" and
leaping into her arms.
    The child had never even seen her, not since the day
she was born.
    The other thing that humiliated her was her surprise
when they'd all been awful to her. They treated her like dirt. Like
she was some distant relative who embarrassed them. They'd always
been that way. Why had she imagined they'd be glad to see her, or
even civil to her?
    She didn't know exactly how or why, but she'd found
herself holding the gun Mo had given her, that he insisted she carry
because her neighborhood was so dangerous.
    Within seconds, the world had cracked and split open.
 

    18
    Sugar hated sitting still, it was unlike her to sit
still; she was a woman of action. But there was nothing she could do
right now except try to pick up the pieces. She had had a service
come in and clean her house, but there were still grisly signs of
what had happened. She had called painters. She was going to have the
room painted another color—a peachy pink—so it would look
completely different.
    Grady had said, "Mom, why don't you move out?
This place is too big for you and it has horrible memories. You don't
need it, make a fresh start."
    But she didn't want that. There were horrible
memories, all right, but some of them were old and she'd been living
with them a long time. She was going to go through everything and get
rid of the garbage—get rid of everything that was Arthur's—and
she was going to have the whole damned place painted, all in colors
she loved that Arthur had vetoed. She might even get rid of all the
furniture, piece by piece, and buy stuff Arthur would hate. Being a
widow had its upbeat side.
    But it scared her to death.
    Now, when she should be mourning Arthur—and a piece
of her was, she just didn't show it—she was also realizing how
furious she was with him. It had been there for years—this
smashed-down, walked-on, crumpled-up fury—and now she could no
longer stamp it down.
    She hoped she wouldn't get up at the funeral and
deliver a diatribe.
    The funeral! Jesus. Where are Reed and Sally?
    The question popped into her head every time she
managed to distract herself from it, which was about once every six
hours. Aside from these four (more or less) daily distractions, it
was all she thought about. The worry was always just underneath
whatever else she was doing, like some ferret or weasel gnawing at
her vitals. It was always there, but she felt better, she felt almost
good, when she was acting; trying to solve it; working to get to the
bottom of the problem. Two people so far had told her they thought
she was "in denial," whatever that was, because she was
keeping busy. And she had seen how that cop looked at her, that Ms.
Langdon, a huge brute of a woman—as if she were heartless. But it
wasn't that. She should be so lucky. She just didn't show her
emotions like other people.
    She was putting things away in her buffet, so the
painters could move it, when she came upon the photo albums
carelessly stored there after some family dinner or other. Without
thinking, she opened one. It was an old one, put together when the
children were young, when they were all happy together. Before Arthur
started cheating on her.
    There was Reed with her complete set of kiddie
kitchen equipment she'd gotten one Christmas, and in another, all
three of them holding up their Easter baskets. That was the year she
and Arthur had been so foolish as to get Grady a baby duck, which had
grown up and chased Reed around the backyard whenever she ventured
out.
    There they were in their Easter clothes, Grady in a
little boys' shorts suit and the girls in matching pink dresses. Evie
had hated hers and wrecked it, falling down; purposely, Sugar was
sure. Reed, true to form, hadn't gotten so much as a smudge on hers.
    They were unbearably adorable—how on earth could
they have turned out so abysmally? Grady a worthless failure. Evie a
drug addict.
    Was I that bad a mother?
    No, that has nothing to do with it. Look at me—I
had a dreadful childhood and I'm fine.
    That was what she always came back to. She thought
that a person had in her the seeds of ability to do and be anything
she wanted, and she considered herself proof of the theory. She
didn't think that you were shaped by your environment, and she wasn't
even that sure about your genes. It was you. Your own character. Your
own strength.
    Sugar had been born the third child of an oil