The Book of Knowledge Read Online Free PDF

drown.’
    â€˜I’m not crying about that.’ She tried to get off her mother’s lap, but Emma held her tight.
    â€˜No, stay still.’ Emma was angry with herself for not having watched her children more closely, and at Caleb for not taking care of Kate when Roslyn, she had surmised, suggested some dangerous game or other.
    â€˜Why didn’t you stop her?’
    â€˜I didn’t see her go in. She was behind me.’
    Emma put Kate down and took up the wooden chair. They all walked slowly through the sand to a row of narrow, upright bathhouses resembling gray privies at the edge of the beach. Roslyn and Lionel went ahead to where they had left their clothes. Emma and Kate went into the one beside them, Caleb into the other. He pulled off his wet suit. On the other side of the wall he could hear Kate singing ‘Apples and oranges and lemmings’ over and over.
    When the children had changed, Emma still wearing her long wet skirts, which embarrassed her by clinging to her legs, they went to where Roslyn and Lionel were waiting at the Rockaway Beach Boulevard crossing. Without a word to each other they walked to Linden Street. Emma waved to the two mothers on the Schwartzes’ veranda, took Kate and Caleb by their hands, and turned back toward Larch Street.
    At their driveway she said: ‘Are you feeling better, Kate?’
    â€˜Yes. But I didn’t feel that bad. It wasn’t anything. I just swallowed some water, that’s all. Caleb and Roslyn pulled me out right away.’
    The afternoon ended in reconciliation. Emma hugged Caleb and said: ‘Thank you.’ Caleb kissed Kate’s cold, salty lips and said: ‘I’m glad you’re okay.’ Kate kissed him back and said nothing.
    That evening Emma insisted they come early into the warm parlor. She was fearful that Kate had got chilled by the salt water. The children assumed their usual posture on the floor, disappointed that they could not go on with their new pretend-in-progress about the monk and the nun. But their mother’s clinging presence—after her fright at the beach, Emma felt the need to stay close to her children—caused them, instinctively, to suspend their play. They sensed that the content of this new game was not for her ears. In fact, they believed it unlikely that anyone else, even someone as dear as their Moth, would ever be able to understand the nature and intensity of their pretending, just as they were quite certain that their delicate exploratory night unions should be kept secret from everyone, forever.
    They settled for a more acceptable game. Caleb took the white endpaper from the library book he had been reading. He tore it in half and, holding the ends between his thumb and first finger, carefully compressed them into a small roll and handed it, ceremonially, to Kate. Then he made another for himself.
    â€˜Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I was hoping to have a smoke. What brand are these?’
    â€˜Lucky Strikes, I think. Light up, Kate.’ He held an imaginary lighter to the end of her rolled paper and then lit his own. He breathed deeply and blew a ring of invisible smoke.
    â€˜Would you care for one?’ he asked his mother.
    â€˜What was that?’
    â€˜Would you care for a cigarette?’
    Emma took note of theirs and said: ‘I won’t use yours up. I’ll smoke my own.’ Pleased to be included in their game, she put a Camel cigarette into her ivory holder and lit it with her lighter.
    Smoking companionably, the three sat and talked about the sunny weather they had been having. For a while no one mentioned the accident of the afternoon.
    But then Emma said: ‘Caleb. You mustn’t always do what Roslyn tells you.’ She had spent much of the long silences at supper with her children planning a lecture to her son. She intended to impress upon him that his male seniority should make him more vigilant of his