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Harvey smiled and ruffled Carol's hair.
"It's only because your stomach's so delicate. You eat leftovers, you get sick. I wouldn't dare feed you leftovers."
"Otherwise your parents would come after me with a stick."
A few easy lines, and the room warmed right up.
A bottomless bitterness spread through me, and my fists clenched before I knew it.
A few days ago, my parents landed in the hospital because they ate leftovers. The stomach trouble nearly took half their lives.
My eyes were red with panic. Harvey had only looked cold.
"That's what they get for being old and greedy. Serves them right."
So this was what it looked like, being treated differently.
I pulled the crumpled receipts out of my canvas bag and held them out to Harvey.
He turned, glanced at them, and frowned. "What's this?"
"The hospital bill."
"Two days of inpatient care for their stomach infection. Four thousand three hundred and twenty total. The ER registration fee's separate."
Harvey didn't take the receipts. His eyes dropped to my hand.
"What happened to your phone?"
Only then did I notice I was still gripping the phone I'd used for six years.
The cracks webbed across the screen stood out sharply under the light.
Yesterday, paying at the hospital, I'd scanned to pay and the screen froze for three whole minutes.
The person in line behind me cursed and shoved me.
The phone hit the floor, and the screen shattered.
"It broke."
I said it lightly. "First, let me get this reimbursed—"
"Sis, are you thinking about getting a new phone too? Look at mine!"
Carol cut in out of nowhere, all delight, digging the newest iPhone out of her little shoulder bag and thrusting it in my face to show off.
"Harvey gave it to me for my birthday. Look, Sis, the camera's amazing."
She held it right up to my face. The wallpaper was a photo of her and Harvey flashing peace signs at the camera.
Last night I'd stayed at the hospital in my clothes, taking care of my parents.
Harvey had been busy putting together a thoughtful birthday gift for another woman, and posing for pretty photos with her.
That picture was hard to look at.
I wanted to snatch the phone right then and smash it to pieces, but I didn't.
I stood there like a block of wood, letting the heavy resentment build in my chest.
"Give me the bill."
Harvey finally reached out and pulled the receipts from me, giving them a careless glance.
"I'll take it out of your allowance later."
Something dropped in my chest, and a laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it.
My "allowance" was three hundred dollars a month, and it covered groceries, utilities, everything for the household. Last month I'd bought the family a new rice cooker.
At the end of the month, the accounts showed I'd gone over by forty-two dollars.
Harvey lectured me for a solid twenty minutes about what he called "fine-grained management."
Six years together, and the wedding never came.
Instead I'd worn myself down into a housewife. What a joke.
I said nothing. I changed my shoes and turned to go into the bedroom.
Carol's parents were waving hello at me.
"Gloria, you got back a little late. If we'd known you were coming, we'd have saved you some food. But now—"
They pointed at the food in the trash can, scratching their heads sheepishly.
"We threw it all out. Didn't leave you any."
Six years of frugal habit made my heart bleed at just one look.
"It's fine, there's still plenty of it here, and some of it didn't touch the plastic bag, it's still clean. Should I dig it out?"
Penelope Fox grabbed a disposable glove, eager to go rummage through the trash.
Dig food out of the trash? It struck me as absurd. I shook my head, my face blank.
"Don't trouble yourself."
Even if I were starving, I wouldn't stoop to food that humiliating.
Carol opened a soda beside her and drank it, then tipped the bottle over so the liquid spilled across the floor.
"Ah!"
She yelped. "Harvey, the floor's a mess now, what do I do?"
"Go grab the mop, I'll wipe it up."
She hadn't even stood before Harvey stopped her.
"You're the birthday girl today. You came here so we could celebrate you, how could I let you do chores?"
"Just leave it."
Carol looked up at me. "Such a clean, pretty floor, it'd be such a shame to leave it dirty."
"There's someone here to clean it up anyway."
Harvey said it so naturally I doubted my own ears.
For six years, every floorboard in this house had been scrubbed by me on my knees with a rag.
Because he said hiring a cleaning lady was a waste of money.
Now his tone made me feel like a joke.
I closed my eyes for a moment, turned, and went back to the bedroom.
The instant I shut the door, Carol's wounded voice came from behind it.
"Harvey, disaster! Look, that pink handbag seems to have a scratch on it. Did something go wrong in shipping?"
"Don't keep it."
Harvey glanced at it once and said it right away. "Go to the store tomorrow and get a new one."
"Have them pull the stock from the nearest warehouse. Rush it."
