Cuts Read Online Free PDF Page A

of her Georgia drawl always sounded a bit sad. She made him think of an aging Scarlett O’Hara torn from Tara’s halls
     but clinging to her pride and, with the help of a beauty parlor, her flaming hair.
    “How does a sixteen-year-old kid,” Ronald asked Helen, “grasp the significance of ‘living in the rank sweat of an enseamed
     bed, stewed in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty’?”
    “Marvelous!” blurted Emily Jean. “You do know your Shakespeare, Mr. Harvey.”
    “It comes with the territory,” he told her, and winked.
    Emily Jean laughed in her high-pitched, fragile way. “Did you know that I played the role of Linda Loman at the Wilshire Playhouse?
     To this day, tears fill my eyes whenever I hear the words of Willie’s funeral. Such a strong, sorrowful…”
    “So you think,” Helen interrupted with a wry, challenging glance at Ronald, “that we should give up teaching literature entirely?”
    Emily Jean looked hurt for only a moment. Smiling strangely, she drifted toward the rear door.
    “Not entirely, perhaps,” said Ronald. “Matters would certainly be improved, however, if you focused on reading material that
     isn’t miles over the heads of the students.”
    “Excuse me,” Ian said. Not waiting for any response, he went to the back door, slid it open and stepped onto the lighted patio.
    To his left, a picnic table was cluttered with paper bags, wet spoons and a stack of plastic drinking glasses. Bottles
     of liquor and mix, mayonnaise jars and pitchers containing drinks concocted at home, stood among the bags. The ice chest lay
     on the concrete floor.
    Emily Jean was kneeling beside the ice chest, holding her plastic glass in one hand while she fumbled with the latch. Ian
     watched her as he set his glass down on the table. Her white blouse was pulled taut across her back, showing the narrow straps
     of her bra and the prominent, jutting points of her spine. She looked damn breakable. He put his hand on her shoulder.
    “Let me get that for you,” he said.
    “Why, thank you, Mr. Collins.”
    “My pleasure.” He opened the ice chest. “How many would you like?”
    “I believe I could be quite happy with three.”
    He dropped three ice cubes into her plastic glass, then filled his own and secured the lid.
    They stood up. They were alone on the patio. “Shall I mix you a drink?” Ian asked.
    “Thank you for the thought, Mr. Collins, but I’ve already seen to that.” She tapped a fingernail on the lid of a half-empty
     mayonnaise jar. “My homemade martinis. I see that I’m getting a tiny bit low. I’m a naughty girl tonight, aren’t I? Am I not?”
    “Oh, I shouldn’t say that,” Ian told her, pouring vodka into his glass as he watched her unscrew the lid of her jar.
    “I shouldn’t either, really. I view overindulgence in gin as a trifling sin and a major solace. Mr. Collins, this may seem
     peculiar to a young man of your energy and talent, but I have been teaching for twenty-eight years and I feel that I’ve wasted
     my life.”
    Her eyes flashed a proud, painful look that defied Ian to contradict her.
    “I could have done so many things. I could have remained on the stage. I could have written books. I could have gone into
     business. So many things, so many opportunities. All thrown away, all lost.”
    “Teaching isn’t the most fulfilling of jobs,” Ian said.
    “As trite as the analogy may sound, Mr. Collins, teaching is like living one’s life on a merry-go-round down at the amusement
     pier. A teacher climbs onto his horse—or hers—and goes around and around, around and around, year after year. The Calliope
     makes charming music, but it repeats itself. It plays the same few tunes over and over.
    The scenery never changes. The faces do. Yes, the faces do change, unfortunately. That’s part of the tragedy, too. Some of
     the faces are so charming, some so full of pain and need. Some, you even grow to love. But they all go away after