The Fresco

The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper Page B

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Authors: Sheri S. Tepper
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fog that stretched out interminably until everything around him was ashen and cold.
    Angelica laughed, without humor. “It’s all right, Mom. You can say you told me so. You were right. It’s not working. I’m paying all the bills and doing all the work, and Carlos is just bunking here when he feels like it. He has also instructed me to tell people he is nineteen, not twenty-one, because he’s older than most sophomores and it embarrasses him. That idea came from his new girlfriend who is also a little older than most of us. She also tells him he wears the wrong clothes ‘to impress people,’ that he should have plastic surgery on his nose, and that she can help him with his career as an artist.”
    â€œFormidable,” said Benita, wanting to laugh and cry, all at the same time.
    â€œWell, you get the idea why I can’t speak for him. Speaking just for me, however, if you get out of there, I’ll hire a mariachi band and dance a samba in the street for celebration!”
    â€œYou don’t mind?”
    â€œWhat I mind was that Dad was Carlos’s role model. Totally self-centered and using you to let him be that way. You remember when we were in high school, Carlos was only one year ahead of me because he was held back in eighth grade? So, we knew the same people, and I heard what he was doing, just what Dad did: sneaking out at night, getting drunk, crashing with his drinking friends so you wouldn’t know. I blackmailed him into going to Ala-Teen, and I went with him. They taught us about drunks having enablers.Carlos figured right away it was all your fault Dad drank, and therefore all your fault that Carlos himself drank. I told him you were an enabler, all right. You enabled us to eat and have a roof over our heads, and if he ever said any such thing to me again, I’d tell you how he felt, and then maybe you and I would just leave him and Dad on their own to enable each other!”
    Benita was for the moment speechless. “Angel. I didn’t know! I didn’t know any of that.”
    â€œWell, of course not. You had enough to worry about. I told Carlos when he was ready to leave home, he could do what he pleased, but for then he had to shut up and behave or I would definitely talk you into going with me and leaving the two of them on their own. He knew where the groceries came from, and he did settle down and cut out the worst of the stuff.
    â€œAnyhow, he’s grown up now. He’ll be twenty-two. Whatever he thinks, it’s time you stopped enabling other people so you can enable yourself.”
    â€œIt’s going to be a little complicated. Your father has mortgaged the house, and the bank is going to foreclose. He’ll expect me to step in and stop it, and when he knows I’m not going to do it, he’s going to get belligerent. It’ll be easier for everyone if you just don’t know where I am.”
    â€œAre you going to get a divorce?” her daughter asked.
    â€œI don’t know. I’m not even thinking about that now.”
    â€œI say go for it. If you want to tell Carlos, I’ll ask him to stick around here tomorrow night. Call around eight, our time. Okay?”
    Eight their time would be eleven where she was, but she didn’t mention that. All she could think of was what Angelica had gone through. And she’d been only a child!
    She threw herself down on the bed, sprawled every which-a-way like cooked spaghetti, muscles letting go all at once, mind switching from Angelica to the bookstore, back to General Wallace, and then to the creature that had called itself an athyco. Whatever did they really look like? And how could they have gone out of her mind even for a moment? So strange, so wonderful, yet hard to think about.Well, strangeness was hard to think about. Wonder grazes you like a bullet; it zips by and is gone, and all you really perceive is the zing as it goes past, or maybe the pain if it

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