The False Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

sponsorships, but knocking had meant facing Mrs. Finch, who was childless and had a short leg. One year, hell-bent for a cookie merit badge, Celia had broken with tradition and accepted Mrs. Finch’s invitation to come in. Seated on a musty brown couch beside a glass of powdered lemonade, she’d been introduced to the extensive doll family filling the greater portion of the living room, and was prompted to greet each doll by name. Celia’s daring earned her an order for five boxes of Tagalongs, five Samoas, and five Thin Mints but made it impossible to deliver the goods, which she convinced her brother to leave on the doorstep. The living room window now contained an illuminated COORS sign. A gutted easy chair cultivated a dead spot on the front lawn.
    Warren and Noreen were already inside by the time Celia reached the front walk, where she was ambushed by a memoryof Djuna standing beside her. “Tell me where you hide your key,” Djuna whispered, “and I’ll be able to come anytime.” Celia looked to the fake rock still beside the doormat, its putative cleverness undermined by the lack of decoy rocks or even a concealing hedge. She picked it up, flipped it over, and slid open the tab.
    “Welcome home, darling,” Noreen said, opening the door. Celia saw her mother’s outstretched arm, her father standing sentinel beside the stairs. For a moment, it seemed as if the whole town was holding its breath, waiting for her to go in.
    Warren’s interest in home improvement aside, the house had changed very little since Celia’s childhood. Inside the front entryway was the small enamel painting of a verdant field that inspired thoughts of creamed spinach. Looking at it now, Celia could practically feel her spirit shrivel to the creature she’d been at sixteen. It did not help that the family photo gallery leading to the kitchen was glaringly out-of-date. The newest picture was from Jeremy’s community college graduation nine years back: he was gaunt but clean-shaven, his smile equal parts pride and relief. This was preceded by an enlarged snapshot of Celia receiving her undergraduate degree. In the most recent family portrait, Jeremy was growing out his hair but had yet to pierce his ears, and Celia was wearing a Cornell T-shirt. The picture dated from Celia’s final high school year, a few months shy of her decision to flee west and several grade levels before her brother began snorting dope in his bedroom.
    For years there’d been talk of a photo that would include Jeremy’s burgeoning family as well as Huck, but so far the only sign of the Dursts’ survival into the twenty-first century was aframed picture of Daniel. The grandson’s photo overshadowed his parents’ wedding portrait in the living room, which eclipsed a framed poem on display since Celia had won a statewide writing contest in high school. All three objects languished on a forlorn coffee table whose charms were annulled by the discomfort of the adjacent heirloom couch. The rest of that least-lived-in room, devoted to Warren’s jazz habit, had sparked one of Celia and Djuna’s epic fights. After jointly vandalizing one of Mr. Pearson’s American Mathematical Society journals, Djuna had wanted to raid Warren’s record collection, but Celia had refused. Thanks in part to her vigilance, everything in that portion of the room had remained intact: the custom record cabinets, the audiophile turntable Celia had been born knowing not to touch, the ancient leather chair in which her father sat wearing oversized headphones, playing his recordings at volumes no one else could bear, insisting LPs delivered greater fidelity than anything invented since.
    From the kitchen, Celia heard the clink of stemware, followed by the
shump
of the refrigerator being opened. When she was small, her mother’s wine had been kept in the door, a topple-prone arrangement that resulted in sporadic compositions of Chablis and shattered glass. At about the same time that juice