Autobiography of Us Read Online Free PDF Page B

to whether I believed her or not. “I must be mad, running off to the middle of nowhere with a bunch of God-knows-who when I could spend a perfectly gorgeous few months right here with you. I mean, I must be off my rocker.”
    “I’ll write every chance I get.”
    “Dear Penelope.” She threw her arms around my shoulders.
    “That was weaving,” I mumbled into her hair, but it seemed no sooner had she embraced me than she was already letting go, fluttering her hand over her shoulder like a handkerchief as she disappeared through the front door.
    I spent those long, hot days helping my mother with her gardening or in the kitchen, the heat with the oven on close to unbearable. I’m sorry to say I never bothered feigning much of an interest in either activity; of the two, the garden interested me more, though even that I could have done without and mostly did, carrying out my chores with an enthusiasm halfhearted at best. Still, I had to admit it was something to witness my mother at work in the kitchen. She could coax a meal out of anything—a few carrots, half a cabbage, a package of Minute Rice. The results were inspired, products of a happy marriage between her resourcefulness and her artist’s eye for color and symmetry: Lettuce leaves fanned out around the edges of each plate for salad Niçoise; a few Birds Eye peas lined up along the border of the boiled new potatoes; a sprig of parsley arrived stuck into the mouth of a broiled fish for an effect she called festive —the taste, she said, nothing without the art of presentation.
    I passed far more hours in the kitchen with her than I would have liked those summer weeks. With school over and Alex away, it was harder to think up excuses. Morning, I cracked eggs and chopped onions before slinking off to the library whenever I could, telling my mother I’d found a partner for tennis at the club. I knew what she would think about all that reading if she found out: Bad for the complexion. Ruins the eyes . A little back-and-forth before the sun went down, I announced instead. Working on my backhand, I said, Mother looking at me with that crease in her forehead she sometimes got.
    “Isn’t there anything else you’d like to do?” she asked at breakfast one morning. “Something a bit more social?”
    I shrugged. “Tennis is social.”
    “Shrugging is for Italians, sweetheart,” she said absently, frowning down at the little pillow she was mending. She sewed during meals more often than not— settles my nerves , she said, though I believe the truth is that she couldn’t bear to waste the time. “And I’m afraid I don’t see how hitting a ball back and forth over a net all day qualifies as social.”
    “Internal dialogue,” my father said, lowering the paper to peer at me. “Far less taxing on the spirit than the other sort. Isn’t that right, Queenie?” He winked and I ducked my head gratefully. How I wish you could have known your grandfather then! Already an older man, seven years my mother’s senior and fine-looking without being what you’d call handsome. An honest face, people said in those days. He was what by that point already qualified as a dying breed, a good, kind man who loved his work and family, who went uncomplainingly to the office each morning, worked long hours, and came home weary and smelling of tobacco and ink. Of course he worshiped my mother; we both did.
    She licked the end of her thread. “I’m glad you two find this amusing.”
    “Now, Eloise—”
    “It just so happens invitations are going out next week for this fall’s charity balls,” she went on, “but apparently I’m the only one at this table who cares about Rebecca being included in this season’s most important events.”
    “I care,” I offered.
    “As do I,” said my father, raising his coffee cup in salute.
    My mother eyed us to see if we were mocking her and decided we were in earnest. “I have it on good authority that the boards are particularly