The Window Read Online Free PDF

before I realize I probably should have thanked her.
    I go back to my room and make my bed.
    Go to my dressing table and touch my mom's picture. "Do you know what I'm doing, Mom? Going to a football game. Isn't that a laugh?"
    But I don't hear Mom laughing back, and I realize I can't quite remember what her laugh sounded like. Tears in my eyes, I put down her picture, go to close my window.
    Without warning, I find myself being pulled to Gwen, being pulled again into the wind behind the curtains, into Gwen's life that summer of 1950....

    "
Pill bug, pill bug, curl up tight.
"
    "It's
'Ladybug. Fly home.'
"
    "But these are pill bugs, Gwen. Want to see my pill bug circus?"
    Abe was stretched out on his stomach, planting toothpicks tipped with tiny bright flags in a circle in the dusty earth. A gray pill bug crawled tanklike to one of them, then felt its way around.
    "How come he doesn't curl up at the toothpick, like he does when he touches my finger, Gwen?"
    "Ask Dad."
    Just then the screen door opened and their father stepped onto the porch, walked down the steps to the car. Abe called, "Dad, come see. I'm training pill bugs."
    "Not now. Maybe later."
    Abe arranged pebbles inside the circle of flags. "Seats, Gwen, for the audience. How long do you think Dad will be?"
    "That depends on where he's gone."
    "Do you think he's driving all the way to town?"
    A few minutes later, Abe said, "I'm going to let my pill bugs go. I think they're tired."
    Gwen watched him run off, then straightened two of the toothpick flagpoles. This was the most restless, boring summer. And hot. It felt like something should happen.
    She wished something would happen.
    Except she knew nothing would, it never did. That salesman, Paul, hadn't even come back, when he'd almost promised.
    What would it be like, Gwen wondered, to be Abe? To be little again?
    No, maybe that wasn't the question. Abe always had something to do. Was that because he was little arid there was still stuff left that he thought was exciting? Or because he was a boy, and there really was?
    "Gwen, come in here." Her mother spoke from the window above. "The beans need snapping now or I won't have them ready in time to eat. And wash off your knees. When are you going to start acting your age?"
    "Never."
    "What did you say?"
    "I said I'm coming."
    I should tell her, thought Gwen, that I don't see any point in growing up, just to spend Saturday afternoon cooking so I can serve supper exactly at 6:00 P.M. Saturday evening. I should tell her I'm never, ever going to think it's something to be proud of, just to get a meal ready on time.
    "I'm coming," Gwen yelled again, louder than necessary.
    She and her mother worked without talking, except once her mother said, "Gwen, did your father say where he was going?" and a little later, "I wonder what's keeping your father."
    He still wasn't back at 5:30 or 5:40, nor at 5:50, when her mother called to everyone to wash their hands and come to the table.
    They sat—her mother at her end, Gwen on one side, Abe and the older boy on the other—and waited.
    Six o'clock came, and the chair at the far end, the only chair with arms, was still empty.
    "Well," said Gwen's mother. "Well." She asked Gwen to say grace.
    ***
    "What happened? What happened to your father?" I call.
    One instant I'm with Gwen and the next I am alone in my room, and it has happened so fast I feel light-headed.
    I have to know, Did Gwen lose her dad, the way I lost Mom? Did he get killed in some accident and never tell Abe why pill bugs curl up?
    I wait until my head clears. Then I stretch as far out into the wind as I can.
    "Gwen," I call. "Gwen? Please answer. Tell me what happened." '
    I think of another question. "And where was my grandmother? Why wasn't there another girl at the table?"
    I'm grabbed from behind and jerked inside.
    "Mandy! Mandy, don't you know how far down the ground is?"
    It's Uncle Gabriel, and his voice is loud and angry and shaky, all at once. "Mandy,