Color the Sidewalk for Me Read Online Free PDF

simply could not deal with it, and it was a long time before I brought myself to phone again. Eventually I told my parents where I was, gave them contact information. “Sometime I’ll see you,” I promised Daddy, “when I’m ready and Mama’s ready.”
    There were numerous ways I could describe my guilt, each symbolizing one of its different facets. Sometimes it was a glacial lake in a yawning cave, with a sucking whirlpool at its center. Sometimes it was a steel rod through my heart, red-hot from the constant blaze of regret. Most times it was a huge movie screen that forever replayed that instant of momentous decision, the camera whirring as it rolled, the horrific consequences of my wrong choice unfolding in slow motion, the audio a raucous blare. Over and over again, a million times in the past seventeen years, those scenes had played in my head. Sometimes the reason for the screen’s appearance was obvious. Other times the memories came from nowhere. I could be in a meeting with a client or combing the hair of an elderly patient at Hillsdale. I could be driving. Showering. Falling asleep. Waking up.
    Soon after that initial call to my parents I began volunteering at the nursing home, both in penance and in dread of facing future holidays alone. There I found a bottomless need for extra hands and compassion. Now, years later, I still spent two to three evenings a week plus Sundays and holidays with my aged friends, reading to them, helping them from bed to wheelchair, listening to life stories, rubbing lotion on dry, spindly arms. I loved making them happy. And I’d benefited as much as they—both from feeling needed and by filling what free time work left me. Keeping busy precluded me from thinking too much.
    Sometime I’ll see you, Daddy. Sometime ....
    Staring at the brightening stars, I reflected on Quentin Sammons’ words about my returning home. You’ll be happier for it. How easy for him to say. I’d long imagined that any chance for my happiness would be as impalpable as a milkweed seed drifting by. And that, preoccupied as I was with the past, even if it should appear I would lack the keen-eyed delicacy to pluck it. A return to Bradleyville was anything but a weightless milkweed seed. The mere thought of it was heavier than lead. There were too many people there I did not want to face, too many wrongs to make right. And as for Carrie’s talk of God giving me a chance to heal, I knew better. Even if my past didn’t stand in his way, my mama certainly did.
    Still, one fact remained. Daddy needed me. He was calling for me, perhaps even at that moment. How could I live with myself if I didn’t help him? Hadn’t I made enough mistakes for one lifetime?
    Mamie’s hair tickled my legs. I took a long drink of tea, now cold, and shivered suddenly despite the warmth of the spring night.

chapter 6
    Q uentin was hanging up the phone when I appeared in his office doorway Monday morning. His coat was off and dangling from a hook in the corner, his desk spread with an associate’s draft designs for a car dealership. A mug of coffee had been set on the credenza behind him, where it could not spill on the artwork.
    Taking a deep breath, I made my commitment. “I need to talk to you about that leave of absence.”
    That day and the next were a blur. I met with one coworker after another, going over accounts, calling clients to explain that due to a family emergency, I was placing them in the capable hands of a colleague. I wondered about taking my computer, what it would require to set up a fax line in Mama’s house. When I began asking assistants to copy files for me, Quentin quietly intervened.
    â€œRemember what I told you?” he said. “Take care of your business at home. Call maybe, help with ideas, counsel us when we run into a snag. But leave the rest until you return.”
    His gentle chastisement only heightened my anxiety.