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*...or something...*
Elinor stood still in one spot on the stone floor of the room her parents had added to the back of this suburban tract home—even her tall straight posture and wispy mouse-brown hair that would not grow beyond barely touching her shoulders held a form of snide arrogance that continued into her cat-like false smiling mouth.
Mary sat low gazing at all the stuff on the wooden bench seat ran the entirety of that room. Just below all the window-glass scrawling with wisteria vines that drooped with bunches of lavender flowers.
Elinor's mother Monica sat on a stool at a bar, a small paperback book held open up in the air near her face, a clear glass dish of plain white yogurt on the counter top before her. Mother Monica turns, looking over her shoulder saying something casual to start the conversation going—at the same time exchanging glances with her daughter, signaling for her to begin.
Mary barely noticing, and yet she takes it all in—the long line of dusty and tarnished hammered metal urns and spouted vessels Monica had brought back from India & Egypt—when she had still been married to Elinor's father, the professor and he'd spent a sabbatical year in each of those countries taking his family along. Now the colorfully artifacts of that lost time, in block-printed cloth and woven spreads, leather ottoman, three-legged stools and skin covered drums that Monica must have shipped back, on display about the house ever a topic of conversation.
Elinor made a remark about something framed on a wall near where she stood, a pseudo-document "mother made" after a "friend" had told her how. Right on cue, Monica says, "It turned out really well," enticing Mary to have a look. Mary stepped up to the document in a black frame above the stereo. The frame contained pieces of writing paper with the ink lettering melted into them as if they had been wetted till the words and letters had turned into runny blurs, Then the paper must have dried and been placed into the frame.
Mary stood there looking at the framed blurry ink on paper, wondering what words were there under the glass, what they really said. She could see where the words had been, yet not one letter clear enough to read. Mary wondered about this, the power, the effect. How foolishly she had stepped right up to look at...what? She didn't even know for sure.
Elinor and Mother Monica said nothing, observing Mary intently. They of course knew what words had been written, and their intention.
