greedy little heart

There were a few things that stood out to Rosemary when she thought of her mother. Memory was unreliable, fleeting images that might have been imagined, seen in a movie or told in gossip. The one thing , the sure thing she knew was that her mother often said to her in a sad, scornful voice, 'You have a greedy little heart Rosemary Marie Lynch, a greedy little heart that will get you into trouble and leave you broken.' She could picture the words tumbling out of her mothers thin tightly held lips, creases running up from them, yellowed teeth in a cold smile, a cigarette coming up and closing her mouth to inhale.

She recalled the last time her mother uttered those words, the last time she said anything at all to Rosemary. She had been in and out of the hospital and the last operation had failed to remove the cancer that was eating her from the inside. Rosemary had felt obligated to visit, driven more by guilt than caring and had driven the 100 miles south to her childhood home. Pulling up in front she saw that the house seemed to have shrunken and decayed, grown as frail as her mother inside. The front door had cobwebs in the corners and the dingy paint had cracked like dried mud. The door bell buzzed instead of ringing and a spark flew out to land on her arm when she pushed the button. Rosemary gasped and stepped back, nearly falling off the small porch backwards. She stepped forward again, straightened her skirt, smoothed her hair with unsteady hands and waited.