The Evening Spider Read Online Free PDF Page B

who did most of the cleaning of the house when they had to move her out. I know he found some pretty old stuff. Old books, old pictures, I think. The family had been in the place for so long, see, no one knew how old some of the stuff was that was packed away in there. He told me he got a few hundred dollars selling some of the old books. But since you’re interested in history, like you say, maybe you want to take a look? I can give you his number if you want. If I can find it. It’s been a few years.”
    â€œSure. That would be great. Thank you.”
    As I said this, a happy little warble came from under the hooded stroller.
    â€œOh!” Patty clapped her hands. “I was hoping she’d wake up!”
    I pulled open the hood, and Patty peered in. “How are you, Little Miss? Ooh, look at your little lamb fleece! What a doll!”
    â€œShe seems pretty well rested,” I said. “Or she’d be crying.”
    â€œHey, honey.” Patty leaned closer to Lucy, who seemed to narrow her eyes at her. “Oh! Dear. What happened, honey? What happened to your sweet little face? Did you take a tumble? You’ve got almost like a shiner there.”
    â€œShe . . .” I started to explain that we weren’t sure what happened, but realized that sounded worse than almost anything else I could say. In fact, we don’t watch her at all. Could’ve been a sharp corner, could’ve been a falling whiskey tumbler. What can you do? Can’t watch ’em every minute.
    â€œShe bumped the side of her crib. When she was sleeping.”
    â€œHuh. Kind of an interesting shape, that bruise. Almost perfectly round.” Patty sighed and looked up at me. “Isn’t that what those baby bumpers are for? My niece, she had some real pretty ones for her daughter. They had pink and orange polka dots. The whole room was pink and orange. Real bright. It was gorgeous. But you can get bumpers to match whatever you’ve got going on in her room, you know?”
    â€œThey say bumpers are a safety hazard now,” I said. “Babies get their heads caught under them sometimes and suffocate.”
    Patty made a face. “Huh. I bet it doesn’t happen very often, though. One person doesn’t tie on their bumpers right and one kid has a freak accident and then that’s the end of the baby bumper business. That’s how it goes these days, huh?”
    I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wished to extend this conversation.As much as I was dreading the wordless monotony that awaited me inside the house, this was probably worse. It was a toss-up.
    â€œI know, right?” I said.
    Lucy popped her hand in her mouth and started sucking on it enthusiastically.
    â€œShe’s hungry,” Patty said. “She says, ‘Mama, feed me.’”
    â€œWe’d better go in and do that, then,” I said.

 
    Â 
    Chapter 12
    Northampton Lunatic Hospital
    Northampton, Massachusetts
    December 20, 1885
    A re you listening to me? What are you squinting at? Yes, that is indeed a wire screen up there around that beautiful balustrade. They installed that a couple of months after my arrival here. A woman had jumped and died. Not the first, apparently. It’s remarkable that this hospital had been functioning for decades before someone thought of that, isn’t it? Progress! It seems to me a more obviously efficient preventative move than denying almost all of us forks at meals, but I am not a medical doctor, so perhaps it is not for me to say.
    Now. Where was I? I believe I was about to tell you about Martha’s birth. I have never told you the story of her birth till now since, while a man of science, you are still a man. Nonetheless, now you are a man sitting before a madwoman, so you will have to endure the details.
    You see, dear brother—I was convinced, even months before the event, that I was to die. The fact that no one else ever broached the subject