A Secret Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

thumbnail sketches were an element of our intimacy. She had always sworn that no one else would remain her friend after hearing how nasty she could be.
    ‘What Cully
missed
seeing,’ she said, carried away by the flow of her theory, ‘was that they are
both
bitches.’
    ‘
Shame
on you, calling your mama that,’ I said out of duty, though my mouth was twitching.
    Mimi tried to look properly ashamed. She had weathervane reactions to her mother. There would be truces, sometimes for months, during which the two thought alike and got along very well; but inevitably an explosion would come – always when the partisan in Mimi was ascendant. The warfare never came completely into the open; it was a suspenseful guerrilla variety.
    ‘By the way,’ Mimi said more soberly, ‘the college has hired Cully as a counselor for the students, and he’s setting up a private practice. Don’t holler nepotism, or at least not too loud, okay? A full two weeks before Cully decided he wanted to leave Memphis, our last counselor had some sudden health problems and told us he’d have to retire.’
    I was having my own thoughts. ‘Maybe Cully thinks I’m like your mother, and that’s why he’s always had such a thing about ignoring me,’ I ventured.
    ‘Why didn’t that occur to me before? I’ll bet that’s it. I can see a strictly superficial resemblance. Now there he is, a psychologist; and he’s never figured all this out. Here we are, mere amateur analysts, and we have the whole thing solved in seconds. You’re beautiful, and the image of the model is that she’s a brainless nitwit. And you were brought up to have social graces, even though you may have lost them up north, I don’t know.’ Mimi gave me a very wicked look. ‘So that might very well be.’ She picked up Mao and tickled the cat behind the ears. Attila, who had come back in, glared at this favoritism from behind a plant stand.
    ‘I think you’ve just had this thing about Cully all these years because he’s different around you.’
    ‘It is very true, Mimi-my-friend,’ I said heavily, ‘that your brother has always been “different” around me.’
    When other boys were going to absurd lengths to bump into me accidentally, when other males were calling every dorm at Miss Beacham’s until they found mine, when men were generally behaving like fools in my presence, Cully had stood resolutely untouched by The Face. Even worse (though less surprising) was his matching lack of interest in what lay beneath that face.
    So I had had a mission since I was fourteen. My mission was to make Cully Houghton notice me. Since I am in most respects a normal healthy person, that ache of piqued vanity had subsided in recent years. I had recognized it for the childish thing it was. But the ache wasn’t entirely gone. I had just begun to assess my power, and use it, when I met Cully Houghton. He had been my first – and for a long time, my only – failure.
    ‘More power to you, if you’re still attracted,’ Mimi said suddenly. ‘He needs someone. He really tried with Rachel. It just didn’t work.’
    ‘Do you remember the expression on Rachel’s face when I walked into your rehearsal dinner in that dress?’ I asked.
    ‘Are you still brooding about that?’ Mimi said incredulously. ‘That was years and years ago.’
    ‘
You
can say that. You’ve never been on the receiving end of the polite freeze.’
    ‘Water under the bridge,’ Mimi said grandly. ‘And we’d better go to bed. You’ve got an appointment with your faculty adviser at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning. Barbara. Dr Barbara Tucker to you, lowly student.’
    ‘Faculty adviser?’
    ‘You’ve forgotten the ropes. She’ll be your shepherd. Help you pick your schedule, approve your courses, et cetera. I zapped you through admission, but you have to pick out your courses and times, and Barbara should know by tomorrow how many of your hours from Elbridge have transferred.’
    ‘Look, Mimi, did you