Cold Spring Harbor Read Online Free PDF Page B

would be sick with anxiety.
    The Drakes had changed their place of residence twelve times in thirteen years. They’d been evicted twice, but it wasn’t always the scrape of poverty that kept them moving: Gloria would often be impelled to find a new place only because the old one seemed alien to her nature in ways she seldom felt obliged to define. At certain disorderly intervals between one home and the next they had found they could only cling together like disaster victims, warding off a vast bewilderment with the laughter of artificial bravery or with groundless, pitiably tearful quarrels; then they’d settle uneasily into new surroundings and wait once again for a stirring of forces beyond their control.
    All three of them had a weakness for the mirror that hung on the living-room wall of this current, temporary apartment;Rachel might have spent an hour there now, admiring the shape and tilt of her face at various angles, if she hadn’t known her brother would be watching.
    Instead it was Gloria who monopolized the mirror in the fading light of the day. She touched up her hair and tried several different facial expressions to suit the word “congenial,” which had occurred to her as the perfect way to describe Charles Shepard. This glowing afternoon would be unforgettable, always, because Charles Shepard was the most congenial person she’d met in years.
    “Oh, weren’t they nice, though?” she asked her children. “I can’t get over what a nice, congenial time we all had. And
I
think we’ll be seeing more of them soon, don’t you?”
    Then her face froze with a frightening thought. “Oh, but I didn’t—” she began, and she could see her rising fear reflected in the children’s eyes. “I didn’t talk too much, did I?”
    “No, no,” Phil told her. “No, you were fine.”
    The Shepards, father and son, did get a little looped at several Village bars that afternoon, taking pleasure in their wasted day and their newfound interest in each other, taking their time because the last train wouldn’t leave for hours, and they laughed easily whenever either of them mentioned Gloria Drake or gave a little parody of the way she’d talked.
    “I thought the girl seemed nice, though,” Charles pointed out.
    “Yeah,” Evan said. “Oh, yeah; very nice.”
    “Very pretty girl, too.”
    “Yeah.”
    But Evan was afraid his father might now say “You going to take her out?” or something like that, and it was always important to keep matters of private business to yourselfwhen you lived with your parents. Besides, he was ready to give another impersonation of Gloria Drake, and he didn’t want to lose the momentum of the comedy.
    “Hey, Dad?” he said. Then, stepping away from the bar, he tried to gather up and bunch the clothes on the left side of his chest to form a bulge there in the approximate shape of a woman’s breast. With one hand he made conspicuous gestures of cupping and fondling what was meant to be the point of it, and in an effeminate voice he said “My, I was beginning to
worry.
”
    “Well, that’s—that’s good, yes,” Charles said after an appropriate chuckle. “Still, I think we’ve probably made enough fun of her now, don’t you? As a matter of fact—” He swirled the ice in his drink, took a sip, and put it back on the bar. Then he stood straighter and settled the fit of his suit coat with several smart tugs at the hem of it, as if it were a military tunic. “As a matter of fact,” he said again, “there’s never been anything funny about a woman dying for love.”
    And Evan had to think that over, impressed with his father’s insight, before he agreed that his father was probably right.

Evan found a bargain in a much-used, nine-year-old car a few days later; then he telephoned Rachel Drake for a carefully planned, oddly breathless little talk, and a day or two after that he was back at her door.
    “Oh, hello,” she said. “Come on in.”
    There was the reek of