Moonburn by Alisa Sheckley Page A

Barcelona but not in the States. “And I don’t mind, if he’s what you want, but I don’t want you to relinquish your power to him. So many women shore up their husbands’ egos by making themselves less. I don’t want that for you, Abra.”
    “I think you underestimate Red, Mom. He’s subtle, in surprising ways. Psychologically, he’s way more perceptive than Hunter ever was.”
    “Hunter was a complete narcissist. I’ve encountered recorded messages that were more perceptive than Hunter. As far as I can tell, one of his chief attractions was that he allowed you to continue to play the role of the good, practical, put-upon Jane Austen-style heroine. Part of the problem with Red is that he’s not playing to your script. He’s got some kind of Mark Twain backwoodsman thing going on, which leaves you with a problem: What’s your new role? Are you the snappish city girl to his laid-back lumberjack? Or are you the supportive little woman by his side?”
    I pulled my hands free. “Mom, I’m not choosing my next role. This is my life.”
    “Darling, we are all constantly choosing our next role. And I think that once you really make up your mind what you want and take charge of your life, you’ll be able to get pregnant. If that’s what you want.”
    I knew better than to argue this point with my mother, who believed that meditation, positive thinking, and high colonics could cure almost any medical condition. “Okay, not getting sidetracked here. Forget the whole theater-of-life spiel for a moment. Let’s concentrate on the meat. You’ve got me completely confused. First you say I can’t trust Red, then you say I’m the more powerful one in this relationship, and that I’m not as nice with him as I was with Hunter. So which is it?”
    My mother took another bread crust from my plate and spread it with strawberry jam. “Both.” She took a bite of the crust. “Which thought scares you more?” There was a speck of red jam on the corner of her mouth. For a moment, it looked like blood.
    “Okay,” I said to my mother, handing her a napkin and motioning to the left side of her face, “so what do you think I should do?”
    “Figure it out for yourself.”
    “Are you kidding? You never stop giving me unsolicitedadvice. What to wear. Where to shop. How to make more friends. For once in my life, I’m actually asking for your opinion, so you tell me to go figure it out for myself?” I crossed my legs and folded my arms. “Typical.”
    “Abra, I’m not always going to be here.”
    “Oh, God, not the mortality lecture.”
    “I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s true.”
    “Why do you always have to aim for maximum drama?” A horrible thought occurred to me. “You’re not going to tell me you have cancer or something, are you? Because this would be a really shitty way of leading up to it.”
    My mother sighed. “No, I’m not going to tell you that I have cancer.”
    “So don’t start in with the mortality thing. You know how I hate that. Hey, where are you going?” My mother had pushed her chair back, and was holding her hand to her mouth. “You’re not going to be sick, are you?”
    “No, no, I just have something stuck in my tooth.”
    I tapped my fingers on the table, wondering if my mother really might be keeping something from me. Nah, probably not. After all, this was the same woman who used to terrorize me with depressing lullabies. The worst was an old spiritual that went, “Hush little baby, don’t you cry, you know your mama’s bound to die, all my troubles soon be over.” If I ever had a kid, I wasn’t even going to sing about boughs breaking and cradles falling.
    My mother came back to the table wearing fresh lipstick. “You know,” she said as she sat back down in her chair, “while I was in the bathroom, I was just thinking about what an eerily intuitive child you were. From the time you were two until you turned twelve or so, I was convinced you had psychic