The Wintering Read Online Free PDF Page A

discover they were not mates only reconfirmed that almost everything she did went wrong. But she had had on one stocking, and so she had put on another.
    Edith had opened the back door and stood staring out with some private thought. But turning, she said only, “It might clear,” and birds fluttered away on wet wings at her voice.
    Amy said, “Quill will have his top down whether it rains or not.” She hoped to share with her mother amusement, at least. But Edith was not to be won over and remained across the room slightly frowning. “It’ll serve you right for going,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to miss that luncheon.” With aimless anger focused at last, Edith twisted her mouth. Amy looked away thinking that when she left, her mother would say, “Have a good time.”
    When she bent over her breakfast, mud inside the sandals slid uncomfortably toward her toes. Leaning against the wall and admitting that she did look tacky, Amy wondered what to do with the rest of her life. Her head felt toppled, as if it needed to be braced. Supporting her chin with her hand, she hoped her life would pass quickly.
    Edith, wondering whether Amy would ever learn to sit up straight, said, “Where’d you get that dress?”
    â€œNear school. Why, don’t you like it?” Amy said, knowing of course her mother did not, or she would not have asked in that tone. Edith’s shrug implied Amy might know what girls wore at that school but it was not what they wore in Delton. But that was her dilemma, Amy thought, that she belonged neither here nor there. She wiped perspiration that sprang out along her hairline. The rain had dwindled and birds drank in the house’s gutter. Edith had been looking out; staring back at Amy, she spoke as if she were dying. “All my life,” she said, “I’ve wanted to get out of the South in the summertime.”
    Amy thought how annoying for people to spend their lives doing what they did not want to; she would not. When Edith bent over her coffee cup her face sagged—either in age or in disappointment. Amy felt sorry for her mother; she met her mother’s eyes over her cup’s rim.
    â€œDid you hear a car?” Edith said.
    But Amy had already taken from her pocketbook a small mirror and was putting on lipstick. She hurried to the living room where the French doors were closed against blown rain. There, through small wet panes, she saw Quill stopping to put on his seersucker jacket. Behind him, windshield wipers had been left running on his car, giving her the feeling he had little time to spare here, and feeling protective toward home, Amy wondered if she would ever be able to leave her mother. The cathedral ceiling in its far reaches held gloom settled like tufts of fog. She tried to remain hidden as Quill came up the steps in his duck-footed way. But seeing her, and doubling up his fist, he made a great show of pretending to knock on the glass wildly. He tried so earnestly to make people laugh, it seemed rude not to. Amy opened the door and smiled broadly. Politely, he kept his eyes from flickering over her clothes. He was dressed meticulously and his clothes became him, as her father’s seemed always to belong to him. He even had his shirts custom-made with tiny monograms. As she tugged open the French doors, her father came out on the porte-cochere overhead and leaned over the railing and smiled down in his flushed way. “Hey, boy, how’s the squash?” he called.
    â€œFine. How’s yours?” Quill’s face grew redder as he glanced up. Her father’s ringed hand pressed against his middle to imply flatness and trim and that he was fit as a fiddle. Those, Amy thought, would be his words if he said any. However, he only held together the flaps of his silk robe and went back inside to shave after calling, “Good to see you, boy.”
    She had been aware of Edith’s running