Clair De Lune Read Online Free PDF Page A

stand out too glaringly. And even that class, taught by a white-haired mistress of impeccable character, she’d had to give up. It was made known to her by discreet suggestion that such a pursuit was inappropriate for a teacher; ballet was for children. After twelve weeks in the intermediate class, she regretfully bowed out. Early on, she had given up the idea of joining the Little Theatre. A remark by a colleague let her know that the Little Theatre was considered a “fast crowd” and was frowned upon.
    For diversion she turned to the poets. And she scribbled lines of her own. Haltingly, feeling her way along, she began to set her lines down in a notebook. Sometimes they became paragraphs, whole passages, which might be, she thought, the germ of a novel. She worked away at it, sometimes for nights in a row, and at intervals, the words came in a rush—images, ideas, flowing from the tip of her pencil, always to her astonishment.
    Then she would walk out in the dark, announcing soundlessly to each house, Tonight I have written this line—this page—I have written this! Afterward, sobered, she’d go upstairs, wash her dishes, eat an apple, press a dress, brush her teeth, turn out the light, stand at the window awhile. Go to bed.

Four
    S he lived in a great brick house on the western side of the town, well away from the stockyards and the railroad yards and the factories producing shoes, sewer pipe, and smokeless powder. Those stood to the east and north. Farther to the north was the section known as Jackroad, which took its name from the old road that used to lead to the mines. There, ore was roasted, reduced, and turned into zinc. Zinc and lead, drawn out of sphalerite and galena, out of the chert and limestone that underlay the region. For half a century, mine tailings, heaped gangue, had risen into massive cones.
    But all this was on the far north end of Center Street, which ran south from there into the business district and beyond into open country, headed for Arkansas. The older residential section lay to the west. Here, before the turn of the century, the very rich had built their mansions. Over time, lots had been divided and lesser homes sprouted among them, but a few of the mansions stood as they always had, commanding whole blocks. They were massive structures of brick and native stone, set on deep lawns. Retaining walls of gray limestone supported black iron fences that ran the length of the front yards. Mermaids thirsted in fountains long gone dry.
    Far back on the lawns stood the carriage houses crowned by cupolas, in turn sporting weathervanes that had lost all sense of the weather, or martin houses that might or might not be tenanted come summer. Gabled, slate-roofed, mullion-windowed; housing a Buick, a Pierce-Arrow up on blocks; their attics full of bound journals; wicker rockers; half rolls of flocked wallpaper; croquet balls and rusted wickets; blue glass jars, half-gallon size; dead dolls, spiders, and the smell of camphorate. Below, the wide doors opened onto broad graveled alleys, grass-grown down the middle. By day, no refuse disgraced the premises. Trash bins, tightly covered, and such articles as a broken chair or cast-off picture frames appeared discreetly only at dusk on the eve of trash collection. These genteel corridors ran west to east for seven blocks, lined on either side by a tangle of vegetation: snowball bushes and honeysuckle, small mulberry trees, japonica, rose of Sharon, and thickets of forsythia gone wild. Bridal wreath, unpruned, drooped across the fences. In their season the scent of viburnam and old lilacs lay on the air.
    One of the mansions was a museum now, seldom open. In others, the lingering remnants of old families hung on, their presence known by the raising or lowering of a window blind, or a light in an upper room. Some said an old crazy woman lived in one of the houses. A corner house, its original symmetry distorted now by odd rooms and porches