Girl in Landscape Read Online Free PDF

sensed herself relying on such logic, she was almost nauseous.
    One thing was certain. Caitlin’s illness was the unspoken text of their days, and the move to the Planet of the Archbuilders was the spoken. It filled so much time that Pella wondered if they even had to make the trip. They were living it here, in Caitlin’s hospital room, each time they visited.
    “Let me tell you about the household deer,” Caitlin said. She flopped the book over, began paging through it in chunks. The huge pages made her hands look tiny and feeble. “I was just reading about that.”
    “Household deer?” sighed Raymond, as though he knew he might as well express interest since he would be forced to listen either way.
    “Yes, they’re like mice, really. We’ll have them, in our new house. They’re everywhere, they live everywhere the Archbuilders do. Listen—”
    “Pella?” It was Clement, looking in. Dr. Flinch stood in the hall behind him, respectfully back, granting the family space.
    “What?”
    “Come here. Leave the boys with Caitlin.” Hegrinned and waved, as though he were somehow barred from entering the room. “We’ll be back.”
    Pella got up from her chair. In the hall, Clement held out his arm to her. She glanced back; Caitlin roughed David’s hair and started, “The household deer—”
    Pella followed Clement and Dr. Flinch down the hall, and Caitlin’s voice was lost in echoey hospital murmurs and clatter. Pella was sorry to leave Raymond and David alone with Caitlin. Their mother’s judgment had somehow gotten worse, and she was boring and mystifying and frightening them with her talk. Two weeks before she had been enchanting Raymond and David with Archbuilders, making them laugh and filling them with real anticipation even when they didn’t really understand. Now she was didactic, awful.
    Clement stopped Pella, a hand on her shoulder. They’d come to an empty place in the hall, near a vacant nursing station. “I want you to hear this,” said Clement, looking from Pella to the doctor.
    Then I don’t want to hear it
, Pella thought instantly. It was a poor way for Clement to start.
    “Pella?” said Dr. Flinch. His nose was enormous, his chin creased. It made his entire face a huge exclamation mark. “Am I saying your name right? Your father tells me you’re a very mature thirteen years old. And very smart.”
    Very, very, quite contrary
, thought Pella. But she said, “I guess.”
    “I was telling your father about what we learned from your mother’s tests in the last few days. There aretwo different kinds of brain tumors, Pella—I mean, of course, there are thousands, no two are alike—but for our immediate purposes there are just two.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “One is like a marble sitting in a bowl of Jell-o. It doesn’t belong there, but it keeps to itself. Doesn’t mix with the Jell-o. That kind is easy, because you can pretty much just”—he made a pinching motion with his forefinger and thumb—“pluck it out.”
    You shouldn’t talk to someone like they were a baby when the subject was brain tumors, Pella thought. If you thought they were still a baby you shouldn’t discuss brain tumors, and if you didn’t think they were still a baby, you shouldn’t talk that way. But Pella didn’t know how to tell Dr. Flinch to stop.
    Or on which grounds.
    “—other kind is like a stain of ink in the Jell-o. The ink mixes with the Jell-o everywhere it touches. There aren’t any edges. You can’t”—Dr. Flinch’s new hand motion depicted frustrated, uncertain scissors—“know where to cut.”
    “Caitlin has the second kind,” said Clement. Then he rubbed his nose as if he was embarrassed, had spoken out of turn.
    “What happens to people with that?” said Pella.
    There was a giggling in the hall. Pella turned around. Raymond and David were on their hands and knees, scuffling along the tile of the corridor. A nurse with a cart of meal trays skirted past them, humming to herself