Letter From Home Read Online Free PDF

clacking keys in Gretchen’s dream.
    â€œGretchen, wake up!” The shrill cry rose into a nightmarish wail. “Oh, help me, Gretchen, help me!”

. . . but I don’t know if he was one of your husbands. You’ve been married twice. Hey, Gretchen, I was always ahead of you. Four trips to the altar—and I don’t know which one was the worst. Maybe you married for love. We never thought when we were girls that we’d end up—well, everybody always believed you’d succeed. Me, I was the girl in the tight sweaters—but, damn them, they all looked, didn’t they? The last time I saw you was that terrible Saturday. Thirty years later I saw your picture in the newspaper. I was living in L.A. with Husband Number Three. You could have knocked me over with a feather . . .
    CHAPTER 2
    A LINE OF bricks, some broken, edged the plot. There were—I counted and realized I’d never done that before—seven graves. The oldest was that of Grandpa Pfizer. I didn’t recognize my father’s grave at first glance. The angel that had knelt on the granite stone was headless now. I’d always reached out to stroke the angel’s wings. How many years had it been since anyone brought flowers for him? I was sharply glad that I could pull memories out of my past. The dead live only so long as someone remembers. When I died, no living person could—or would—picture his young face. The photos in a dark brown album in my library held only faint interest for my children, the laughing eyes of the grandfather they’d never known. The pictures were black-and-white. They’d never know—not unless I told them—that his eyes were the blue of a northern sea and his hair black and shiny as sealskin; my eyes, my hair before streaks of silver marked the passing years; my daughter’s eyes, the glossy black of her hair. When I entered the cemetery, I’d looked for the family plot though I’d not come here today to visit these graves. But I had time enough to see them all. There had been no headstone on my grandmother’s grave when I left town. I took a step, leaned against my cane, and bent down to touch the graven letters:
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CHARLOTTE KLEIN PFIZER Beloved wife of Karl Gerhard Pfizer October 23, 1876-June 26, 1944
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Oh, Grandmother, I loved you so. . . .
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GRETCHEN SCRAMBLED OUT of bed, reached the window. Barb Tatum, her stricken face chalk white in the milky radiance of the moon, pounded on the window screen. “Gretchen, come quick. Mama’s in trouble. Oh, Gretchen, help me.” Barb’s pink cotton nightgown had thin white straps over her shoulders and ended above her knees.
    â€œBarb, what’s wrong?” Gretchen yanked the hook free, pushed against the screen.
    Barb stumbled back. She wrapped her arms across her front. Her chest heaved as she struggled to breathe. “I ran. I ran all the way. Oh, my foot.” She sank to the ground, clutched at her leg.
    Gretchen darted to the wall by the bedroom door, flipped the light switch. She ran back to the window, looked out at Barb, pinioned in a square of brightness. Barb’s head was bent. Her lustrous sorrel hair masked her face, tumbled over her bare shoulders. She held tight to her ankle. Blood spurted from a gash on the bottom of her right foot. “I must have run across some broken glass. I didn’t even feel it.” Blood puddled in the grass.
    Gretchen drew her breath in sharply. “Don’t move. I’ll get Grandmother—”
    â€œNo!” Barb’s voice was stricken. “We have to hurry. Mama needs help. Oh, Gretchen, I have to get back. I shouldn’t have run away. Bring me something to bandage my foot.” She pointed at the blood.
    Gretchen had always wished she looked like Barb even though some of the girls didn’t think Barb was really pretty. Her features were chiseled, her nose thin, her chin pointed, but her lips