The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood Page A

A fork beating batter in a ceramic bowl. The hiss of butter on the griddle. Her husband’s voice, steady, firm—“It’s coming” — then her daughters’ high-pitched little-girl voices: “I want mine with blueberries!” “I want mine plain!”
    She pulled a comb through her wavy, still wet hair, and as she lifted her arm to do it she smiled at the soft hair under her arm. How he liked that she didn’t shave there! He would press his nose to it and breathe her in.
    The smell of pancakes and bacon filled the air, the sounds of plates slammed onto the counter, of juice being poured. “I hate blueberries in mine! Daddy, I told you!”
    Her hand hesitated over the can of deodorant. She wouldn’t use any today, she decided.
    â€œHon?” her husband called to her. “Breakfast is ready.”
    She slipped on her white Dr. Scholl’s, and made her noisy way out of the bathroom to her family already sitting at the kitchen table, waiting.
    â€œSorry,” she said, “I’m going to pass today. I have to meet with a sales rep first thing.”
    Her older daughter, Ava, frowned over her juice glass. It was always unnerving how that girl seemed to see through her, even at just ten years old.
    But Lily’s face contorted. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Mama. They told us that at school.”
    Absently, she tousled Lily’s hair.
    â€œThat seagull book,” Charlotte said, deliberately meeting her husband’s gaze and holding it. “Full of wisdom like, ‘Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.’”
    â€œWhat does that even mean?” he asked.
    She shrugged, shook a Valium from its bottle, and swallowed it with a gulp of juice. She was aware that her husband was watching her take the pill. He didn’t believe in taking drugs to feel better—one of their many petty disagreements. “You don’t need to get stoned to be happy,” he’d told her more times than she cared to remember. “No,” she’d correct him, “ you don’t need to get stoned to be happy.” As if to score a point, she took a second pill, and gave him a small smile.
    â€œMama, what will we do all day without you?” Lily asked, obviously on the verge of tears.
    â€œAunt Beatrice is coming to take care of you!” She said it like they’d won a prize. Aunt Beatrice!
    â€œNo!” Ava groaned. “She doesn’t pay attention to us.”
    From the corner of her eye she saw her husband frowning. She sighed. It was true, her sister wasn’t the best babysitter. She didn’t even like children very much. But Charlotte had been so distracted that she hadn’t yet lined up any babysitters for the summer and until she did Beatrice would have to suffice.
    â€œMama, don’t leave. Please please please,” Lily was whining, and Ava was saying, “She’s so boring!”
    But the Valium had already started to kick in, and the noise of her life didn’t make her tense or angry or depressed like it did without the pills. Instead, there was a low hum somewhere deep in her brain and her limbs felt loose and rubbery.
    â€œThey want end caps and window displays,” she told her husband. “I’ve got to set everything up so we’re good to go for pub date next week.”
    â€œIt sounds like a terrible book,” he said.
    â€œIt’s all right,” she said.
    Ted didn’t like books very much. Any books, never mind one about a philosophical seagull. Over a decade ago, when they lived in Manhattan and she was working at the Strand bookstore on Broadway and Twelfth, she would come home excited, a bag full of review copies and hard-to-find used books. She would lay them out on their enamel-topped kitchen table as if they were precious things. They were precious things, she reminded herself now. How she’d hated the way