C4 antho - Chamber Four

~266~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
Mandy sat at the kitchen table, her back to the doorway,
looking through a Bed, Bath and Beyond catalog.
“Sorry,” Darla said. Mandy turned around, raising her
eyebrows. Her brown hair hung down her back in frizzy
swirls. “For disturbing you,” Darla said, pointing to the catalog
and the Glamour magazine on the table next to it.
Mandy said, “No problem.” She was drinking iced tea,
the ice cubes already melted in her tall blue glass. “Just need
a break sometimes. With the baby and all.”
“Sure,” Darla said, looking at a flowering bush just out
the window, the lace curtains hanging like bangs across a
forehead, the potted violet in soil so dry it was struggling. “Of
course,” Darla said. “I’d be horrible at it. I’d probably start
drinking. I know I would.” Mandy’s back stiffened. She
looked over at Darla. Darla shook her head. “Just kidding,”
she said. “Raising a child must be so hard.”
Mandy said, “Can I get you something?”
“Diet Coke?” Darla said, edging to the refrigerator, where
graduation photos and school pics of cousins hung under
heavy fruit-shaped magnets. All eyes direct at the camera.
Grade schoolers in green grass and corduroy overalls. Tiger
and devil faces in Halloween grease-paint, purposeful and
wanting to be there. “I can get it,” Darla said.
Mandy flipped through the catalog. Still looking down,
she said, “We need to get a new comforter. She threw up all
over the last one.”
“That’s OK,” Darla said.
“I buy her new clothes all the time, she’s growing so
fast.”
“I’ll bet,” Darla said.
“My own shirts are stained at the shoulders,” Mandy
said. Darla looked at her shoulders and the T-shirt front of