The End of the Pier Read Online Free PDF

her dead father (who had died too long ago to visualize concretely); there was her Aunt Sheba, with her wry, ironic mouth given to caustic comments, who marched resolutely down the hall collecting Chad, Chad at the age of five or six—Aunt Sheba coaxing him out to come along, there was a party, let’s not miss it. They were all collecting on the stairs before Maud could control them, herd them back into their locked rooms— shove them back behind their doors. There they were, all gathered on the stairs to sit and watch through the banisters the flamboyant party to which they had not been invited. The party that flowed from inside to outside, from the old family drawing room out onto a lawn and then across the lake.
    And there was no control: her mind was crowded with old relatives, ones she hadn’t thought of for ages, ones that it wasn’t necessary absolutely to keep locked up—other aunts, uncles, the cousin who had died of cancer at twenty-eight, and then friends she had lost touch with. They were filling the hall, the wide staircase, peering over the mahogany banister, searching the lake as if those passing boats might ferry them across it—
    Return I will
    To old
    Bra-zil
    There on a lawn somewhere was Chad at five, at ten, at sixteen. Go back, back inside. She could never, of course, tell this to another living soul, because how could they understand what she meant? A psychiatrist, maybe, someone like Dr. Elizabeth Hooper, who’d been in the Rainbow that day; but who else? “Possessive,” that’s what Shirl would say. “You want to keep that kid locked up, that’s all.” Of course, Shirl would be the least sympathetic of all, since she spent so much of her time yelling at Joey to either stop playing hooky or haul ass out of the house and work. And yet Maud didn’t think she was possessive—not in that sense. She frowned in her effort of trying to figure out just what it was: that she wanted to be able to go back and see it all over again—not like snapshots (they only caused her pain), but to have all of those stages of growing up out there, like the lines of light thrown by the lanterns across the water.
    She clutched at the book of poetry in her lap as she looked across the lake—the music was louder, faster, strident with the sting of some female vocalist—and thought about the woman in the poem walking by the sea, singing. Maud had got far enough in her understanding of this poem to know that somehow the woman singing there had power over the sea. A simple mortal woman had some kind of control over it.
    But the singer wasn’t simple, Maud admitted to herself, despairingly. Obviously the poet meant the woman was an artist. A singer, a poet, a musician—an artist. She had “genius,” and that was the reason she had control, although Maud did not at all know just what the control was, except that it was crucial.
    â€œTina Turner.”
    Maud jumped slightly at the sound of Sam’s voice. Half her mind had been aware he had stopped talking some moments ago and had been just sitting there, quiet, drinking his beer, listening to the party across the water. “What? What?” She squinted at him.
    Sam nodded toward the other side of the lake. “Tina Turner.” He yawned, patted his hand politely against his mouth, and looked down at Maud’s lap. “You still trying to figure out that poem about Key West?”
    It annoyed her—well, embarrassed her a little—that he seemed to be able to read her thoughts. Irritably, she asked, “How can you tell that’s Tina Turner? You can’t possibly. It’s too far away.”
    â€œWell, I can tell.”
    He could not; it was just a singer and a fast, jumpy song. Hardly anyone was dancing; there was only a little clutch of tiny figures. She liked the small daubs of the gowns of the women, even though the dark, the distance, and the lantern light