Page 6 of Hunger

The silence stretches between us. I can hear her kitchen on the other end of the line. Water running, a cabinet closing. She's doing the dishes. She always calls me while she does the dishes because it's the only quiet time she gets in the house.

"Your father asked about you,"she says finally.

The air in my lungs goes tight. "Did he."

"He asked if you were eating. If you were warm enough. The weather has been bad and he saw on the news that western Nebraska had a storm."

"Millfield isn't western Nebraska."

"I know that. I told him. He still wanted to know."

I look down at my shoes. They're wet from the snow in the parking lot. There's a small puddle forming on the linoleum beneath them.

"Tell him I'm fine."

"Tell him yourself. Come for dinner."

"Umma."

"Just dinner, Jenny. You don't have to stay. You don't have to talk about anything you don't want to talk about. Come for an hour. Eat. Come home."

I close my eyes. There's a version of me that gets in the car on Sunday and drives the forty-five minutes to Omaha and rings the doorbell and steps into the warm kitchen that smells like my childhood. There's a version of me that sits at the table across from my father and lets him not look at me while my mother fills both of our plates and pretends nothing's wrong. I've been able to imagine that version of me for two years. I haven't been able to become her.

"I can't this week," I say. "I'm sorry."

The silence on the other end of the line is longer this time.

"Okay,"she says."Next week, then."

"Maybe."

"Maybe."She lets the word sit between us."Eat something tomorrow. Real food."

"I will."

"I love you, ?? ?."Our daughter.

"I love you too."

I hang up the receiver. The puddle under my shoes has spread. I take a paper towel from the roll above the sink and squat down to wipe it up.

Lisa is still on the couch when I straighten. She doesn't say anything, but she looks up from her textbook and gives me a careful look that's not quite pity and not quite sympathy.

"You want some tea?" she says.

I blink. "What?"

"I'm making tea." She gestures vaguely at the kettle on the stove that I hadn't noticed she put on. "There's enough for two."

It's the first time in maybe a month that Lisa has offered me anything. I don't know what to do with it.

"Sure," I say. "Thanks."

She gets up and crosses to the kitchen, and we stand together in the narrow space while the kettle works toward a whistle. She doesn't try to talk to me and I'm grateful. She hands me a mug — chamomile, because that's what she has — and goes back to her textbook.

I take the tea to my room and leave the light off. I sit on the edge of my bed, hold the mug between my hands, and let the heat work through my palms.

In the corner, my violin case leans against the wall. The shape of it is familiar in the dark. I look at it.