The Velvet Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

had received the splashes from so many dish washings and hand scrubbings that its surface was spongy and full of splinters. You could even pick up little pieces of wood fiber with your fingernails. On the wall, about two feet above the table, was a single brass spigot, going green with age. That one faucet was the only source of water in the cabin. But it could be worse. Many of the places the Williamses had stayed in the last three years had had no indoor water supply at all.
    While Robin and her father ate their lunch, Mama and Theda started doing the dishes. Theda washed and made an awful clatter with the tin plates in the enamel basin. Rudy, followed by Cary, drifted out the back door, probably to poke around in the old motor parts someone had left in the back yard. Shirley had been put down for her nap in the other room.
    Mama brought a stack of tin plates over to the table. She shuffled them from the top to the bottom of the stack as she dried.
    The plates got several dryings each as Mama chatted about what she had done all morning and what she was going to do.
    “You know, Paul,” she said, “I think we can fix this little house up so it won’t look so bad at all. Now that we can count on a steady salary, even if it is just fifty a month, we can put a little bit by for furniture and curtains and…”
    “ Wait a minute, Helen,” Dad interrupted. “Don’t forget, Mr. McCurdy only said maybe it would be permanent. I have to prove I’m able to give satisfaction. Of course, I expect to if I can just keep from getting sick again, but…”
    “I’m just sure you’re going to stay well here, Paul,” Mama said. “The climate’s so mild and all. Why I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few months you had a foreman’s job, and we’ll all be living in a nice little white house like that one of Mr. Criley’s.”
    Robin sighed. It would be wonderful to believe in Mama’s prediction. But it had been a long time since she had counted on Mama’s plans coming true. She just couldn’t see how Mama could go on believing in them herself. When Robin was little, she had loved Mama’s stories about wonderful things that had happened or were going to happen. She couldn’t recall just when she’d begun to realize that Mama remembered only the best parts of things, and planned things that weren’t ever going to happen.
    Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and then Mama went on. “Well anyway, Theda and I really gave this old place the scrubbing of its life this morning. Didn’t we, Theda?” Robin could see that the rough board floors were still waterlogged. “And then I helped Theda wash her hair and set it, and we did some unpacking…” At that point Mama broke off suddenly and frowned at Robin. “And Paul,” she interrupted herself, “you just have to talk to Robin about wandering off. She was gone again —all morning! And we certainly could have used her help.”
    Dad sighed and looked at Robin. “Where did you find to go this time?” he asked.
    “I just walked through the orchard up to the foothills,” Robin said, “and Dad, I met a woman who lives in a stone house that looks like something out of a fairy tale. She was awfully nice, and she showed me her family. At least she called them her family, but they were really a cat and a raccoon and a goat and a hummingbird. And Dad, she’s sort of crippled and she has to stake Betty — that’s the goat — out on the hills every day, and I said I’d come over and help her sometimes. Is that all right?”
    Dad shook his head in helpless wonder. “I never should have asked,” he said. “Sometimes when I’m not so tired, we’ll go over that again and see if I can make heads or tails out of it. In the meantime you stay home and help your mother.” Dad’s voice sounded cross, but his eyes weren’t. Robin let her smile say that she knew he wasn’t really angry.
    “Dad,” Theda broke in, “now that you have a job, couldn’t I have just a little