Sisters of the Road Read Online Free PDF

torte. “He does all kinds of art—xerox art and collages and sometimes really big paintings. Like, before I knew him I didn’t know anything about art. I thought art was like,” she thought hard a moment, “like art in my parents’ house, like” she searched for a name, “Picasso or something.”
    “Your parents have a Picasso?”
    “Well, no, but you know, like that. Museum-type stuff.”
    “And he supports you, this artist?”
    She nodded, almost too quickly. “He gives me anything I want—clothes and… And we eat out a lot. And he’s taught me so much. I mean, here I was in school—in this really good girls’ school—and I just hadn’t learned a thing. I mean, sure, dates and algebra and history and grammar , but nothing important!”
    She seemed intent on convincing me. “And he loves me, he loves me so much, that’s what I can’t get over. Because I never had that at home. It was Dad working all the time at the office and Mom giving parties. Sure we had money! But we didn’t have love!”
    It all sounded as if she’d read it somewhere—more likely, heard it said in an old movie, a very old movie. I almost laughed. But if there was anything I remembered from my adolescence, it was that I had hated being laughed at, especially when I was baring my soul.
    Trish’s sincerity, real or not, hadn’t interfered with her appetite, however. She had polished off the torte and was pressing the moist crumbs to her small rosebud mouth with a purple fingernail.
    “These slices are so small,” I said. “Have another one. On me, of course.” I handed her a couple of dollars.
    She hesitated a moment. “I feel so stupid leaving my wallet at home. My boyfriend gave me two hundred dollars yesterday and it’s just sitting there.” But she took the two bills.
    I watched her walk quickly back into line, tall and thin, with those spindly limbs and big breasts. She moved her body not with the unconscious grace girls sometimes have, when they’re experiencing that strange new power to attract, but with an unwilling, almost contemptuous severity, as if she were saying, “Yes, look all you want. Assholes!”
    And look they did. Every male eye in the place was riveted on her as she paraded back with her second dessert. But if she didn’t want them to look, why did she wear those tight jeans and high-heeled boots? Wrong, Nilsen, I told myself. Not everybody wants to look like you do. And I flushed a little as I glanced down at my own worn turtleneck sweater and overalls. Like most feminists I’d probably say I dressed this way to be comfortable and free. In truth I was dressed partly for protection, like a soldier who dons a chemical warfare uniform before venturing into enemy territory.
    But if I were free to wear anything I wanted to… That was stupid. I was free, freer than I acted anyway. I just didn’t like to go shopping.
    Trish polished off her second slice of torte with almost as much relish as she had the first, then lit a Marlboro and blew smoke out her sharp little nose.
    “I’m going to have to get back to work soon,” I told her. “So maybe we could talk a little about how to help you—I mean, what I can do.”
    “Wait,” she said, sounding almost panic-stricken, as if I were forcing her to remember a bad dream she’d almost put out of her mind. “You don’t have to go back so soon, do you? We just got here.”
    “I’m afraid I do. June’s all alone, unless Carole has come. But you can come back with me if you want. If that makes you feel …” I was going to say “safer,” struck by her look of fear, but instead said, “better.”
    It’s just that—I don’t feel like being at home today. I mean, after last night. Rosalie and me, well, we were sort of roommates—when I wasn’t at my boyfriend’s.”
    “She was really a good friend of yours then.”
    “We hung out together almost every day. She was really fun to be around. She was always laughing and cracking jokes. We