The Silent Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

for a second-grader, even a good reader like you. Can you read the rest?"
    "'And,'" I read. "That's an easy word." I faltered on the next one.
    Peggy helped me. "'Practical. That means 'useful."
    "'Stylish and practical,'" I read. "Wait. Don't help me with the next one. It's long, but I can do it." I made the sounds under my breath and put them together. "'Maternity, " I said. "Is that right?"
    "Yes. You
are
a good reader."
    "'Dresses,'" I finished. "Now listen. I'll read it all. 'Stylish and practical maternity dresses. " I looked again at the catalogue page, where six women were standing in poses with their hands on their hips and their feet in pointed shoes, arranged as if they might begin to dance. Their smiles were forced and foolish, I thought, not at all like real smiles.
    "What does
maternity
mean?" I asked Peggy. She had moved across the room and was pulling at the heavy draperies, rearranging their folds and shaking out dust. I could see the dust specks float slowly in the light from the window.
    "Motherhood," Peggy said. She retied the heavy gold cord that held the draperies back. "Those women in the picture are going to be mothers."
    "How do they know that?" I asked, looking again at the stupid smiling women in their stylish and practical maternity dresses. "Isn't it always a
surprise when you find a baby? Austin's mother said she just happened to find Laura Paisley in the garden."
    "Oh!" Peggy said, as if she were surprised. "Oh, I didn't mean—" She came over quickly and took the catalogue from me. "Look. I wanted to show you the pages where they show books. See here?" She sat down beside me on the sofa and pointed to the lists of books in the catalogue. "Here's one called
Card Tricks!
Imagine that! There wouldn't be a book about card tricks in the library, do you think?"
    I laughed, thinking about the librarian, Miss Winslow, at the public library on Main Street. Peggy had a library card now, and she took me with her sometimes, on Thursday afternoons. Miss Winslow would disapprove of card tricks, I knew. But I thought Father would like the book. I wondered if we could get it for him for Christmas and decided to ask Mother.
    And maybe, I thought, I would ask Mother, too, about the ladies in their motherhood dresses and how they knew that such a surprise would come their way.
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    But it was Father who explained. Mother was so flustered when I asked that she almost dropped her knitting.
"Well, my goodness!" she said. We were in the parlor after supper, and it was almost time for me to go to bed. "Did you hear that, Henry? Did you hear what Katy asked?"
    He hadn't, because he was reading the newspaper, but when I repeated the question, he smiled. Not a flustered, nervous smile like Mother's, but his usual quiet smile, the one that moved his mustache into a curve. "You just come along with me, Katydid," he said, getting up from his chair. He folded the paper and put it on the table. "We'll go into my office and I will show you something wonderful."
    "Henry, do you think—" Mother began. But I had already taken his hand.
    "Well, put her coat on her, dear," she said. "It's cold out."
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    But it wasn't very cold, just nippy, as Naomi always said, and Father didn't bother with my coat. We had to go out the front door and across the yard, then into the side entrance that was just to his office, though it was still attached to our house.
    Our house was never locked, but Father's office always was. He opened the office door with his big key, turned on the lights, and led me in. I loved Father's office. There was his large, important desk, and two chairs where sick people—they were called patients, I knew—could sit. And there was a
long, narrow table where they could lie down, if he had to poke at their stomachs. One time, two summers before, he poked Paul Bishop's stomach and then sent him to the hospital and took his whole appendix out. Austin and I wanted ours taken out, too, so Father sat us