Windfalls: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

but French was foreign, foreign was strange, and she was already strange enough without a name that substitute teachers, to the pooled delight of the rest of the class, always mispronounced—Shir-ice? See-rise?
    Sighing, she crumpled the note, tossed it in the trash, and set off through the house, assembling the iron and ironing board, the basket of laundry and the spray starch. Back in the kitchen, she plugged in the iron and waited listlessly for it to heat. When the air above the sole plate wrinkled with heat, she licked her forefinger and flicked it across the surface of the iron, felt the sizzle of evaporating spit. It was satisfying, the tidy quickness of it, but it was oddly exciting, too, that small proximity to danger.
    “Cerise!” she exclaimed suddenly. Ruthlessly and without warning she cocked her wrist and thrust it against the hot edge of the iron. The hurt was quick and wicked. She made a little sound like someone else’s moan. Tears flung themselves from her eyes, but she used her other hand to keep her wrist pressed against the iron. This is me, she thought, burning, and for a moment she felt a kind of triumph that overshadowed all her pain. When she could stand it no longer, she yanked her wrist away, first lifting it to her nose to sniff, and then holding it out so she could study the tidy white stripe of ash running like a broken bracelet along the inside of her wrist, across the tender skin where a razor might be pressed. That was strange, she thought, pleased by her courage, by her ability to punish herself for her awkward size and awful name. She imagined Sam seeing her wound and being impressed—and maybe even a little intimidated—by what she was capable of doing.
    Looking at the burn on the pale inside of her wrist, she couldn’t keep from remembering Sam’s finger in her palm. But somehow all the shame and confusion of that moment had vanished like a lick of spit against a hot iron. She felt clear and focused, as near happy as she’d been in a long while. This time, as she reached toward the iron, she had a swell of feeling that could only be known as hope.

    B Y THE TIME THE BUS FINALLY REACHED A NNA ’ S STOP, HER MIND WAS scraped so raw from a week of working through the same sad set of facts and coming to the same inevitable conclusion that she’d almost ceased to think at all. Mechanically she lurched down the aisle, stepped blindly onto the street, and stood for a moment amid the diesel fumes and dust, blinking in the gritty light and trying to get her bearings. A large cluster of people was milling on the sidewalk in front of the building where she was headed. At first she thought there’d been an accident. But the crowd seemed too purposeful to be waiting for an ambulance. A second later it crossed her mind to wonder if she had made a mistake about the address or the time of her appointment, but even as she scrambled to recheck her memory, she knew she could not possibly have got those details wrong.
    She’d brought a book to read in case she had to wait, and now she clutched it to her chest and began to walk faster. As she drew nearer, the group resolved into individuals, though to Anna’s eyes they all looked much the same—the women in thick hose and knee-length skirts, the men in crew cuts and polyester jackets. There were also several children, scrub-faced kids in tidy hand-me-downs. With a jolt of alarm Anna realized that the whole group was watching her.
    Her thoughts clattered together, and her steps began to slow. For a split second she thought she should try to speak to them. But before she could think of what to say, she saw the suspicion on their faces, and her apprehension sharpened into fear. One of the men was holding a placard toward the passing traffic. When he turned his sign in Anna’s direction, she read its scarlet word and started as though she’d been slapped. A protest blurted up inside her, inadvertent as vomit. Part of her wanted to turn and run, and