Prerequisites for Sleep by Jennifer L. Stone

partially closed under her mother’s mandatory three-to-one ratio of gathered sheers and half-drawn insulated drapes. She returned to her own room to push back the curtains and raise the blinds. Opening the window and leaning on the sill, she peered out, searching the far corners of the backyard to pick out the mock orange and snowball bushes she had helped her father plant the summer she turned eight. Towering between them was the variegated maple. Somewhere, she recalled, there was a photo of Liam and Sheldon eating hot dogs while sitting in its branches, their bare legs dangling just out of her reach.
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    â€œI bought a turkey,” her mother said when they returned. She was carrying two Sobeys bags, reusable green totes with pictures of enlarged blueberries on the side. Her father followed with two more bags. These ones had pictures of artichokes on them.
    â€œMom, I really don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble.” Even as she said it, Diane knew that things were already in motion and picking up speed.
    â€œNonsense, everyone was coming next weekend for Thanksgiving anyway. We’re just moving the date up.”
    For the rest of the afternoon, her mother bustled happily around the kitchen with an upgraded sense of purpose. Diane and her father donned sweatshirts and sat on the deck drinking beer. For dinner, Diane talked them into ordering takeout by insisting that she was craving a donair. Her parents preferred pizza, so she picked up a medium with everything except black olives for them. While she was out, she rented a movie, a family flick with a kid and a dog. By ten-thirty, they were all in bed.
    It was after eleven when she strolled into the kitchen the following morning. Her mother was already filling the turkey with handfuls of stuffing.
    â€œWhat can I do to help?”
    â€œGet yourself some breakfast, then start the vegetables. We’ll all be wanting to shower later, so we need to do the dirty work first.”
    Diane put the leftover pizza in the microwave and poured herself a glass of milk.
    â€œYou’re eating like a teenager,” her mother said.
    â€œNo, I’m not. If I were a teenager, I would drink from the carton.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t be eating like that if the boys were around.”
    Actually, thought Diane, I probably would be. After Sheldon started disappearing, she began reevaluating everything. When he was home, if he wanted to eat potato chips and ice cream sundaes for breakfast, she didn’t say a word. Often, she joined him, stealing a few minutes of his time while coveting more. She bought junk food and took up baking again, deliberately leaving things where he would see them, another one of her desperate ideas. The sad fact was that Sheldon wasn’t much of an eater. When he did eat, he was silent and picked at his food, and she studied his hands and thought about how much they were aging and of all the things they probably did to survive when he wasn’t at home. They were scarred and usually bruised. Concentrating on them kept her from imagining some of the other things he could possibly do for food or money.
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    Everyone arrived just after five. Doris hustled them all into the dining room and began placing platters of food on towels, folded in quarters, in the middle of the table. Diane took the seat next to Julie and Allison, her nieces, while Barry and his wife, Caroline, sat on the other side and her parents took their usual spots on the ends.
    â€œThe dishes are hot,” her mother said. “Diane, you scoop the potatoes since they are in front of you. The girls can serve the squash. Caroline, you do the asparagus, and I’ll manage the dressing. There is a platter of turkey at each end, and we’ll pass around the gravy and cranberries.” Doris belonged to an era where such tasks were women’s work. Holiday dinners meant that all the women, whether they were guests or not, were also expected to be