Ghost Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

so sorry, she would say, curtseying low to the ground. Can you ever forgive me for all the pain you’ve suffered?
    At that point, Mrs. Ephers appeared in the doorway of Mara’s bedroom. Young lady, dinner is on the table. As it always is at this hour. You’re big enough to tell time, you shouldn’t need me to fetch you. Your grandfather is waiting for you. He works hard all day to make a nice home for you; the least you can do is bepunctual at the dinner table. Are your hands washed? And did you even try to run a brush through that hair? Although a garden rake might be more useful.
    Mara set herself secret goals and tests. If she could walk to school every morning for a week without once stepping on a crack … if she made Mephers smile and say “thank you” to her three days in a row (for the housekeeper could be wooed, with a cup of tea brought while she was ironing Grandfather’s shirts—no laundry could be trusted to get them just right—or a bouquet of flowers, until some bigmouth complained they’d seen Mara picking them out of the Historical Society’s garden) … if she got a perfect score on two spelling tests, or arithmetic, and Grandfather said, “Well done” … when she turned eight … But at no point did her hair straighten or her skin turn creamy pink. And when she got her first period, two weeks before her twelfth birthday, and no change occurred in her crackling bush of hair, she knew she was doomed for life.
    The
next
thing everyone knew she was a moody teenager. What happened to you? Mrs. Ephers said. You were always so good at school; your grandfather is not going to be happy with this report card.
    Long sessions with Grandfather, impatiently taking time from his crowded schedule to coach Mara. It’s a quadratic equation—what does that mean? I know you know the answer to this, Mara: don’t play stupid, it isn’t cute. There’s a big competitive world beyond these walls and I’m trying to prepare you to take part in it. You won’t always be able to live here, you know.
    “I know,” she screamed one night. “I know you’ll leave the apartment to Harriet, she gets everything, she even had her own father. You hate me for being born and now you want to prove I can’t do anything right so that I kill myself or run away and leave you and Mrs. Ephers and Harriet in your little heaven here.”
    And slammed into her bedroom, in total defiance of the household law against slamming doors.
    It was Harriet, getting ready for her bar exams, who came into Mara’s room later that night. “They’re old. They don’t know how to talk to a teenager.”
    “So I’m supposed to feel sorry for them? They’re always telling me how ugly I am. Nothing I do will ever be as good as what you did.”
    “You’re not ugly. When you don’t scowl you have a strong and interesting face. Godfrey was saying so last night.” Godfrey Masters, the suitor of that particular era.
    “He did?” Mara’s dark brows met in suspicion, but her scowl lightened, even though strong and interesting was a poor second to beautiful and charming.
    None of the suitors stayed around for long. Mara wondered if Harriet drove them away on purpose, fearing that if she married, she would follow their mother and grandmother into the ether.
    First Grannie Selena, who got pregnant while Grandfather Stonds was finishing his residency. She could have waited—after all, he’d come home from a difficult war, to finish the medical training he interrupted to serve, but
selfish
was the first word you’d think of with her.
    That was from Mrs. Ephers, who had known Selena since Dr. Stonds installed his bride in the family apartment in 1942. Even when he was in love with Selena, haunted by her quicksilver charm, he knew she’d never manage a house. So Mrs. Ephers arrived, not so much to spare Selena any worry (you couldn’t imagine such a self-indulgent woman worrying about anyone else’s comfort, anyway) as to make sure the doctor had