The Folded Leaf Read Online Free PDF

another and always found helpful, never occurred to him. He went on day after day, doing the best he knew how. And it wasn’t seeing other men get rich off his ideas (oil had been found on the ranch in Montana two years after he had sold it) or any single stroke of bad luck, but the terrible succession of them, large and small, which had changed him finally, so that now he was seldom hopeful or confident the way he used to be.
    When, like tonight, he was not inclined to be talkative, the others felt it and did not attempt to be cheerful in spite of him. Helen addressed an occasional remark to her mother but Mrs. Latham’s replies were not encouraging and led nowhere.
    Except when he was obliged to ask for the butter or thebread or the jelly, Spud ate in silence. Much of the time he was not even there. Mr. Latham had to ask him twice if he wanted a second helping. Spud managed to pass his plate without meeting his father’s eyes and said, “What are we going to have for dessert?”
    “Baked apple,” Mrs. Latham said.
    “I wish you’d make a chocolate cake sometime. You know the kind—with white icing?”
    Mrs. Latham felt the earth around the Brazilian violet and then poured the water that was in her glass over it.
    “When we get straightened around,” she said.
    “I don’t think I want any baked apple,” Spud said. “I don’t feel hungry.”
    “First time I ever knew you to make a remark like that,” Mr. Latham said. “Are your bowels clogged up?”
    “No,” Spud said, “they’re not. I just don’t seem to be hungry any more. Not like I used to. I haven’t felt really hungry since we moved to Chicago.”
    Mrs. Latham signaled to him to be quiet but he paid no attention to her. “It’s the atmosphere,” he said. “All this smoke and dirt.”
    Mr. Latham stabbed at a couple of string beans with his fork. “Perhaps you’d better move back to Wisconsin,” he said sharply. “I seem to remember that you ate well enough when we lived there.”
    “I would if I could,” Spud said.
    “There’s nobody stopping you,” Mr. Latham said.
    Mrs. Latham frowned. “Please, Evans,” she said. “Eat your supper.”
    “Well,” he said, turning to her, “it’s very annoying to come home at the end of a hard day and find all of you glum and dissatisfied.”
    “If you call this home,” Spud said.
    “It’s the best I can provide for you,” Mr. Latham said to him. “And until you learn to accept it gracefully, maybe you better not come to the table.”
    Spud put his napkin beside his plate, kicked his chair back, and left the room. A moment later they heard the front door slam. Helen and her mother looked at each other. Mr. Latham, carefully avoiding their glances, picked up the carving knife and fork and cut himself a small slice of lamb, near the bone.

8
    T wo pictures stood side by side on Lymie Peters’ dresser. The slightly faded one was of a handsome young man with a derby hat on the back of his head and a large chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. The other was of a woman with dark hair and large expressive dark eyes. The picture of the young man was taken in 1897, shortly after Mr. Peters’ nineteenth birthday. The high stiff collar and the peculiarly tied, very full four-in-hand were bound to have their humorous aspect twenty-six years later. The photograph of Mrs. Peters was not a good likeness. It had been made from another picture, an old one. She had a black velvet ribbon around her throat, and her dress, of some heavy material that could have been either satin or velvet, was cut low on the shoulders. The photographer had retouched the face, which was too slender in any case, and too young. Instead of helping Lymie to remember what his mother had looked like, the picture only confused him.
    He had come into the bedroom not to look at these pictures but to see what time it was by the alarm clock on the table beside his bed. The room was small, dark, and in considerable disorder. The bed was