Beautiful Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Alice Adams
Avery is). Jessica hears all those shouts as though they were distant voices. But then in a rush she gets up and hurries around to where Avery is, Avery still standing beside the pool, beside the place where Harry was lying. Jessica grasps her daughter’s arm. She pulls her around to the other side of the pool and then up the twig- and pebble-strewn slate steps, almost dragging her along, toward the side yard and the house.
Where the lawn begins Jessica stops; she turns to face Avery and to grasp her shoulders. And she begins to shake her daughter, saying loudly, terribly, “What’s the matter with you, are you in love with Harry McGinnis?
Are you in love?
”
Shaking her until they are both weeping.
THE TODDS
Alternatives
It is the summer of 1935, and there are two people sitting at the end of a porch. The house is in Maine, at the edge of a high bluff that overlooks a large and for the moment peaceful lake. Tom Todd and Barbara Rutherford. They have recently met. (She and her husband are houseguests of the Todds.) They laugh a lot, they are terribly excited about each other and they have no idea what to do with what they feel. She is a very blond, bright-eyed girl in her twenties, wearing very short white shorts, swinging long thin legs below the high hammock on which she is perched, looking down at Tom. He is a fair, slender man with sad lines beside his mouth, but not now! Now he is laughing with Babs. Some ten years older than she, he is a professor, writing a book on Shelley (O wild West Wind), but the Depression has had unhappy effects on his university (Hilton, in the middle South): 10 percent salary cuts, cancellation of sabbaticals. He is unable to finish his book (no promotion); they rely more and more on his wife’s small income from her bookstore.And he himself has been depressed—but not now. What a girl, this Babs!
The house itself is old, with weathered shingles that once were green, and its shape is peculiar; it used to be the central lodge for a camp for underprivileged girls that Jessica Todd owned and ran before her marriage to Tom. The large, high living room is still full of souvenirs from that era: group pictures of girls in bloomers and middies, who danced or, rather, posed in discreet Greek tunics, and wore headbands; and over the fireplace, just below a moldering deer’s head, there is a mouse-nibbled triangular felt banner, once dark green, that announced the name of the camp: Wabuwana. Why does Jessica keep all those things around, as though those were her happiest days? No one ever asked. Since there were no bedrooms, Tom and Jessica slept in a curtained-off alcove, with not much privacy; two very small rooms that once were storage closets are bedrooms for their children, Avery and Devlin. Babs and her husband, Wilfred Rutherford, have been put in a tent down the path, on one of a row of gray plank tent floors where all the camper girls used to sleep. Babs said, “How absolutely divine—I’ve never slept in a tent.” “You haven’t?” Jessica asked. “I think I sleep best in tents.”
A narrow screened-in porch runs the length of the house, and there is a long table out there—too long for just the four Todds, better (less lonely) with even two guests. The porch widens at its end, making a sort of round room, where Tom and Babs now are, not looking at the view.
Around the house there are clumps of hemlocks, tall Norway pines, white pines, and birches that bend out from the high bank. Across the smooth bright lake are the White Mountains, the Presidential Range—sharp blue Mount Adams and farther back, in the exceptionally clear days of early fall, such as this day is, you can see Mount Washington silhouetted.Lesser, gentler slopes take up the foreground: Mount Pleasant, Douglas Hill.
Beside Babs in the hammock lies a ukulele—hers, which Tom wants her to play.
“Oh, but I’m no good at
all
,” she protests. “Wilfred can’t stand it when I play!”
“I’ll be able
Where the lawn begins Jessica stops; she turns to face Avery and to grasp her shoulders. And she begins to shake her daughter, saying loudly, terribly, “What’s the matter with you, are you in love with Harry McGinnis?
Are you in love?
”
Shaking her until they are both weeping.
THE TODDS
Alternatives
It is the summer of 1935, and there are two people sitting at the end of a porch. The house is in Maine, at the edge of a high bluff that overlooks a large and for the moment peaceful lake. Tom Todd and Barbara Rutherford. They have recently met. (She and her husband are houseguests of the Todds.) They laugh a lot, they are terribly excited about each other and they have no idea what to do with what they feel. She is a very blond, bright-eyed girl in her twenties, wearing very short white shorts, swinging long thin legs below the high hammock on which she is perched, looking down at Tom. He is a fair, slender man with sad lines beside his mouth, but not now! Now he is laughing with Babs. Some ten years older than she, he is a professor, writing a book on Shelley (O wild West Wind), but the Depression has had unhappy effects on his university (Hilton, in the middle South): 10 percent salary cuts, cancellation of sabbaticals. He is unable to finish his book (no promotion); they rely more and more on his wife’s small income from her bookstore.And he himself has been depressed—but not now. What a girl, this Babs!
The house itself is old, with weathered shingles that once were green, and its shape is peculiar; it used to be the central lodge for a camp for underprivileged girls that Jessica Todd owned and ran before her marriage to Tom. The large, high living room is still full of souvenirs from that era: group pictures of girls in bloomers and middies, who danced or, rather, posed in discreet Greek tunics, and wore headbands; and over the fireplace, just below a moldering deer’s head, there is a mouse-nibbled triangular felt banner, once dark green, that announced the name of the camp: Wabuwana. Why does Jessica keep all those things around, as though those were her happiest days? No one ever asked. Since there were no bedrooms, Tom and Jessica slept in a curtained-off alcove, with not much privacy; two very small rooms that once were storage closets are bedrooms for their children, Avery and Devlin. Babs and her husband, Wilfred Rutherford, have been put in a tent down the path, on one of a row of gray plank tent floors where all the camper girls used to sleep. Babs said, “How absolutely divine—I’ve never slept in a tent.” “You haven’t?” Jessica asked. “I think I sleep best in tents.”
A narrow screened-in porch runs the length of the house, and there is a long table out there—too long for just the four Todds, better (less lonely) with even two guests. The porch widens at its end, making a sort of round room, where Tom and Babs now are, not looking at the view.
Around the house there are clumps of hemlocks, tall Norway pines, white pines, and birches that bend out from the high bank. Across the smooth bright lake are the White Mountains, the Presidential Range—sharp blue Mount Adams and farther back, in the exceptionally clear days of early fall, such as this day is, you can see Mount Washington silhouetted.Lesser, gentler slopes take up the foreground: Mount Pleasant, Douglas Hill.
Beside Babs in the hammock lies a ukulele—hers, which Tom wants her to play.
“Oh, but I’m no good at
all
,” she protests. “Wilfred can’t stand it when I play!”
“I’ll be able
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