The Animators(57)

But Mel snaps to; she’s leaving no room for this, which gratifies me. “No offense,” she says. “I just had a hard time picturing Sharon having a family. It’s strange to meet people who share, you know, DNA with her.” She trails off. Peers at a portrait of my great-grandparents scowling at the camera lens in the sun of a tilled field, a pony tied to a post behind them.

Shauna shoots me a long, digging sort of look. I really should have prepared them for what I would look and sound like. It didn’t occur to me that what I’ve become might require a warning.

Mom returns, balancing four Diet Cokes stacked in a tower, two glasses. Without asking, Mel steps into the kitchen and retrieves the other two. “Thank you, honey,” Mom calls out.

“Mom, Mel said she always pictured Sharon without a family,” Shauna says.

“Is that right.” Mom plunks the Cokes down on the coffee table. She doesn’t look up.

Mel glances at me. “I just had a hard time imagining you all. That’s all I meant.”

Mom looks up, smiles thinly at Mel. “Well, she’s got one. Here we are.”

Shauna gives me that look again. I use my middle finger to scratch the side of my head. “When’s your hair gonna grow back?” she asks me.

“Shauna, that’s like asking me when my fingernails are gonna grow. I don’t fucking know.”

“Watch your mouth,” Mom says. She sees Mel looking at the portraits on the wall. “Would you like to see more pictures of Sharon, Mel?”

“Yes, I would,” she says. “That would be lovely.”

Mom slaps her thighs and rises. “I got a whole bunch in the bedroom. Let me go look.” She hustles down the hallway.

“Get the Glamour Shots,” Shauna calls after her.

Mel stops. “You didn’t just say Glamour Shots.”

“They made Sharon Kay wear a cowboy hat,” Shauna says. “With fringes. She cried.”

Mel hoots. “Dude. I have to see.”

“I’ll bet you were the only ten-year-old they ever made tape up her boobs,” I tell Shauna.

She sighs. “I tell you Caelin wants em for Christmas?”

“I think you mentioned that.”

She shifts forward to pop open her Coke, plucks her shirt out. “But she also wants these head shots done for pageants. Natalie—you remember Brandon’s littlest sister? Her girls do pageants. They got Caelin wantin to do em, too.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s not horrible. I think it’s kinda stupid, but she really wants to get em. So I told her, I said, you can only get the one. You gotta pick one. Cause they’re expensive. But she’s so good at it. You should see her shaking that little butt to ‘Copperhead Road.’ Cutest thing ever, I swear.”

Mom patters back in, hands Mel something in a frame. It’s the Faulkner Gazette article written right after I got the Ballister scholarship. I’m shocked to see the photo of myself at the bottom of the page—cheeks fleshy and pale, lips smooth. There’s a heavy sheaf of bangs over my forehead. Seventeen.

“Whoa.” Mel takes the paper, squints at it. “You were valedictorian,” she says, as if it confirms something.

“She was.” Mom straightens in her chair. “Got a full scholarship to UK, too. But she wanted to go out-of-state. Guidance counselors down to the high school still talk her up something terrible. I run into that one, what’s her name, at Walmart the other day. Oh, I meant to say something the last time I talked to you, but the lady who ran the library, the one you worked for? She died.”

I start. “Mrs. Horsemuller died?”

“Well, yeah, honey. She was old. And wasn’t there somethin wrong with her?”

“She had epilepsy. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I done said I forgot. I’m surely sorry. It was maybe around the same time—” She makes a vague gesture with her hand.

“Jesus,” I say.

“I saw her sometimes. She was real sweet. Always talking about how proud she was of you. She kept your all’s movies at the library there in town.”

Mel looks up. “You’ve seen our movies?”

“Some of em.” Mom relents. “I’m gonna watch em all, now that I got the Internet up here to where it won’t break. Sharon Kay sent me the one y’all did last. That big long one.”

I cock an eyebrow at Mom. She rolls her eyes and sighs. “Well, Sharon knows I got the nervous-leg syndrome. Makes it hard to stay put for a whole movie. So I ain’t watched it yet. But I saw the little short bit of it. It looked real interesting. The lady the movie’s about, she’s crazy, iddint she?”

Mel goes, “Oh yeah. That’s Mom.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s my mom. A character based on my mom.”

“Your mom.”

“Yes ma’am.” Mel puts the article down, plucks up a Polaroid: Shauna’s ninth birthday. I am reticent and smeared with cake. Shauna screeches over a broken Polly Pocket beauty salon.

Mom clears her throat. “And what did your mom think about that?”

“I don’t know. She’s dead.”

Mom looks at me. Another life preserver I could have thrown that I didn’t. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” she says.