Out of the Blue by Sally Mandel Page A

My jaw would just as soon I never uttered another word as long as I lived. But there was just this one more thing. “We should head straight for the bakery.”
    “Don’t you want to go home?”
    “Ma will be fretting.” I said fwetting. For some reason, it was easier on my stitches. “She’ll want to see I’m alive.” Joe had called her from the clinic when he was trying to track down Dr. Klewanis.
    Thankfully, there was a parking space just down the block from Norma’s Crust. Joe came around and extracted me. When I stood up, I almost passed out from the pain. He hung on tight. Even then, I was aware of his body, of the lean strength in his arms.
    “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
    “You have every right to ask,” I said. It suddenly struck me that I hadn’t brought a man home to my mother in a long, long time. “Ma can be cranky.” Especially when she sees her daughter looking like she had her jawline restructured by a bulldozer.
    I’d helped Ma decorate the bakery window in black and orange crepe paper for Halloween. There were the standard festive items: cookies in the shape of ghosts, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats, and so on. But Ma being Ma, there were also the not so standard inventions that the neighborhood had learned to expect: a severed ear that dripped raspberry sauce (she called it the Van Gogh special); the Rudy Giuliani Phantom of the Opera; and my personal, if obscure, favorite, the Leona Helmsley Lady Macbeth.
    I wanted to steady myself before she saw us. I stopped Joe and sneaked a look inside. Suddenly I noticed that Ma seemed older than her age, which was fifty-two. There wasn’t a lot of glamour in her tangle of curly gray hair and generous body, and I could tell by the slope of her shoulders that she was tired. She finished waiting on Father Dewbright, who only stopped by to find an excuse to grab Ma’s hand and propose to her. She turned to send Carmen into the kitchen for something.
    When Joe opened the door for the minister, I nodded and he gave us that smile, which I have to say was more devilish than heavenly. With his myopic eyes, he probably didn’t even notice my bandages. Not so Ma. Her eyes locked on me, then on Joe, then on me and back to Joe. She looked like a spectator at Wimbledon.
    “Trick or treat,” I said.
    “Fuck,” Ma replied.
    “Brought you Joe Malone,” I said. It came out Mawone. “Joe, Ma. Norma Bolles.” He held out his hand, which she didn’t take. A bad sign.
    “What have you done to my daughter?” she asked.
    “Me,” I said. “Joe told me not to. I was an idiot.” The edges of her mouth began to pull downward in little twitches. During my adolescence, those ominous spasms pretty much guaranteed that I was about to be grounded. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Carmen watching from behind the kitchen door. I took note that you can see the whites of people’s eyes from afar, if they open them wide enough.
    “Your mother’s right, Anna,” Joe said. “It was unconscionable to let you go up there.”
    “You bet your skinny ass,” Ma growled at him. She untied her apron and I knew she’d be around the counter in two seconds.
    “Shut up Both of you!” I said, and had to grip the counter to keep from falling over. They stared at me dumbstruck while I waited for the flashbulbs to stop going off in front of my eyes. “A short speech because this hurts. I did something stupid and I’m paying for it. You’re both making it worse so cut it out.”
    There was a silence. Then Ma looked at Joe. “You want to come over and get something to eat?”
    “Sure,” Joe said.
    The apartment building was only four doors from the bakery. When I was diagnosed, we moved from a brown-stone that had a lot of stairs and too many narrow doorways to a slick new boring building that made more sense.
    I was torn between the desire to head straight for my mattress and a profound curiosity, not to mention anxiety, concerning Joe and Ma. Since the living area