Chapter 5

Sherry woke in the morning, feeling restless. After being busy for such a long time, having little or nothing that had to be done, was a little disconcerting. Working all hours of the day and night had become a lifestyle and it was a lifestyle that she enjoyed. She’d always been the kind of person who would start doing something and lose all track of time with the result that she tended to keep erratic hours. She had given over to that nature completely while living with Alex.

She stayed in bed dreading getting up. Her mother would be in the kitchen waiting to make breakfast and, of course, she’d want to talk. Sherry had never been the kind of person who enjoyed talking about the lives of celebrities, the current fashion, and trading recipes. Her mother, on the other hand, thought those were the greatest topics of conversation imaginable other than explaining to Sherry what she should be doing with her life.

While Alex may not have all of the trimmings of politeness that one might expect, he was interesting and talking with him was exhilarating. While the pure technical discussions had been challenging, the speculative technical discussions were what she really missed. It was fun playing the how-would-you-do-this game with him. There were just some areas in life that couldn’t be automated. One of those was preparing food from scratch. She knew that her mother would be surprised to discover that she and Alex had discussed cooking. Her mother wouldn’t have recognized it as such. They’d had hours of conversation about every little detail that came to mind.

Her mother would have been horrified listening to them discuss how much easier taking care of dishes would be with two dish washers – one would hold the clean dishes and the other would hold the dirty dishes. There would be none of that stacking of clean dishes in a storage space to make room for dirty dishes. Sherry suspected that Alex would be ordering a second dishwasher any day now. She was seriously giving thought to having two installed in her own house when she finally got one.

She frowned at hearing the sound of the vacuum cleaner being used in the hallway outside her bedroom door. As had become habit while living at Alex’s house, she signed asking what time it was. When there was no answer, she turned and looked at the clock. It was 9:30 in the morning. She guessed that her mother had gotten tired of waiting for her to wake and had decided that vacuuming in front of the bedroom door was a reasonable way to chase her out of bed.

The quiet little vacuum cleaners that managed to sweep the floors every other day at Alex’s house was another thing that she missed. It was amazing how easy it was to get used to that. She never really knew when they did their thing. It was just that she’d come out of the bedroom after waking to notice that the carpet had been vacuumed. When not in use, they were hidden under a little table in the corner.

She climbed out of bed and dressed in a pair of jeans with a tee shirt. She was supposed to go shopping with her mother. Her style of shopping was to go into a place, go directly to the products she was looking for, pick out the best one, buy it, and leave. Her mother liked to SHOP; which meant going from store to store, browsing through everything they had. Sherry could buy a pair of jeans in five minutes, while it took her mother four hours to visit every store that sold jeans. It never seemed to occur to her mother that there were only a handful of jeans brands, and that the typical store carried almost all of the brands. She sighed.

She opened the door and mumbled, “Coffee.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” her mother said while turning off the vacuum cleaner. “Did my vacuuming wake you?”

“No,” Sherry answered. “I was lying in bed thinking about various ways to dispose of a dead body.”

“That’s not funny,” her mother said.

“I need coffee,” Sherry said.

“There’s a fresh pot in the kitchen.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll put the vacuum cleaner away and be down in the kitchen in a minute,” her mother said.

“Don’t rush on my account. Take your time. Take hours if necessary,” Sherry said. “The later we go shopping the less time we have before the stores close.”

Her mother said, “I don’t understand. Every girl in the world loves to shop except for my daughter. What did I do wrong?”

“Personally, I don’t think you did anything wrong. There’s something kind of creepy about shopping for hours to buy one item,” Sherry said.

Her mother said, “You wouldn’t say that about buying a new PCU.”

“A what?”

“A PCU. You know, that part of a computer that does something or another,” her mother said.

“Do you mean a ... CPU?”

“I guess that’s what it’s called,” her mother said.

“You’re right. I’d take at least ten days to pick one. The tough part would be finding one that was the right color. You wouldn’t want it to clash with the motherboard,” Sherry said.

“Don’t be insulting. There’s no such thing as a motherboard,” her mother said.

Shaking her head, Sherry said, “I better get some coffee in me before I fall asleep, standing here.”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” her mother said.

Several hours later, Sherry and her mother were standing in the clothes section of a large store. Her mother was holding up a pink dress. Sherry’s eyes were desperately seeking out an exit from the store.

“This would look so cute on you,” her mother said emphasizing the word, ‘so,’ in a way that sent chills down Sherry’s spine.

“I’ve got the navy blue pant suit. That’s enough shopping today,” Sherry said.

“Can’t you just try it on? You’d look so good in it.”

“I hate pink.”

“No female hates pink,” her mother said pointedly.

“I do. Let’s head over to the Shack and check out the electronics.”

“Let’s finish shopping for some clothes,” her mother said looking horrified at the prospect of going into an electronics shop with her daughter.

Sherry said, “We’re done. I’ve got a pants suit that is perfect for business and that’s all I need for now.”

“You need a real dress.”

Sherry looked at the pink monstrosity that her mother was holding up and said, “I’ve still got the one you bought me when I was thirteen.”

Her mother said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Even if it fit you, it would be out of fashion.”

“If I don’t get out of this store, I’m going to start screaming,” Sherry said.

“Just try it on,” her mother said holding the dress out.

Sherry eyed the dress and then said, “I wonder how strong the stitching is on that dress. Hmm ... I bet I can find out.”

She had reached her frustration limit and her mother recognized it. The last time Sherry had been pushed to her limit, she had decided that some destructive testing to determine the quality of the clothes would be appropriate. That shopping trip had ended with a long discussion with mall security and the purchase of several hundred dollars worth of rags.

Rather than argue further, her mother said, “Let’s go have a little tea and cake over at the pastry place.”

“How about burgers?” Sherry asked.

“I swear that if I hadn’t given birth to you that I’d never believe you were my daughter.”

“Okay, we can go have tea and cake,” Sherry said.

Sherry followed her mother through the mall to the little shop that sold pastries. She stood in the shop looking over the variety of items in the display case knowing that she would get the death by chocolate, a sinful confection of chocolate cake with fudge, ganache, and mousse between layers, which was a specialty of the place. Her mother, entranced by the variety of goods, stood there looking over everything while making commentaries on how good everything looked.

Sherry went over to the woman at the counter and said, “Death by chocolate and a large coffee – strong.”

The woman behind the counter pointed at Sherry’s mother and asked, “Are you with her?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” the woman said and looked at Sherry’s mother expectantly.

Sherry’s mother was leaning over to better examine the contents of the case. She would point at something and then chatter away about how good it looked. She was totally unaware that Sherry had walked over to the cash register and placed her order.

“You might as well serve me my order. She’s going to take all day to make up her mind,” Sherry said thinking that nothing was more torturous than shopping with her mother.

“Okay,” the woman said.

Sherry had gotten her coffee and death by chocolate, taken a seat, and had two sips of her coffee before her mother finally decided on tea and a tiramisu. She had eaten half of the death by chocolate before her mother made it to the table.