Читать книгу The Fainting Room - Sarah Pemberton Strong - Страница 10

6.

The Shepards sat opposite each other with Ingrid between them, all three of them clinking silverware and glasses with the awkwardness of people on a blind date. Evelyn’s ham, decorated with canned pineapple slices and maraschino cherries stuck into it with toothpicks, would have been more at home on the cover of the women’s magazine where she had found the recipe; sitting on Ray’s grandmother’s Spode serving platter, surrounded by a wreath of sugar-glazed carrots, it looked out of place.

Evelyn made the first attempt: “We can’t let Ingrid sit around here bored all summer. Maybe she’d like to go to the mall with me tomorrow? I have some things to return.” The curtains, she was thinking, which were the wrong yellow anyway.

“The mall?” Ingrid looked up from her ham. The mall was where girls like Linda’s daughter Melanie went to sit on indoor benches next to fake plants, drink Diet Coke from McDonald’s and giggle when boys walked by. “Um, no thanks.”

Ray, realizing from Ingrid’s tone that the mall had been absolutely the wrong suggestion, and that Evelyn was offended, tried a different tack: “Do you go into Boston much, Ingrid? Dorm excursions and so forth?”

That was better. Ingrid nodded and said, “Some. I’ve been to the symphony a couple times, and the museums and stuff. And sometimes we go hang out in Harvard Square. But I’m not, like—” she paused, on the verge of smiling—“a shopper. A lot of weekends I just ride my bike around on the back roads. I rode all the way over to Walden Pond the other day.”

“That must be ten miles. How’d you like it?”

“Well, it’s beautiful, of course. Even with the swimmer’s beach and stuff, it’s not really spoiled. I wouldn’t mind spending a year there in a tiny cabin.”

“ ‘I went to the woods,’” Ray quoted, “ ‘to see if I could discover what they had to teach me, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’”

Evelyn looked at her husband. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s Thoreau,” Ingrid said. “You know, Walden? We had to read it last year. He was cool, but really, I just went to the woods to ride my bike.”

Ray laughed. “An equally fine pursuit.” Perhaps his wife had been right, he thought, perhaps it would be fun to have this girl around for the summer. She had a sense of humor, and she was smart. Maybe he and Evelyn could take her around a little, show her Boston. Evelyn had loved to be shown around when they were first dating; they’d gone to museums, jazz clubs, string quartets, plays. Now she never wanted to; Evelyn seemed to feel he was trying to correct lapses in her education and grew silent and bored in the galleries or fidgeted on the hard concert hall chairs. All he wanted was to share his enjoyment of things with someone he loved so that she might enjoy them too. He swirled the Riesling in his glass, finished it, poured more.

Evelyn pushed back her chair and began picking up plates.

“I’ll do that,” said Ingrid, glad of an excuse to leave the table. She picked up platter of ham and followed Evelyn into the kitchen. “Should I wrap this up? There’s a lot left.”

“No need. I’ll do it.”

“I don’t mind helping,” said Ingrid. “I mean, you’re letting me stay here and everything, the least I can do is help out.”

Evelyn fought back exasperation and opened the dishwasher. This was her kitchen, her space. When she first moved in, she had made Ray fire his cleaning lady—Mrs. Shaughnessy had exerted such a claim on the house that there was no room for Evelyn. She looked at Ingrid, who had taken a dishtowel and was wiping the counter with it. “Tell you what,” she said. “It’s trash night. If you want to do something, why don’t you help Ray take out the trash? He’ll show you where.”

Ingrid looked up from the counter. Was it her imagination, or was Mrs. Shepard annoyed with her about something? She wasn’t frowning, not exactly, but there was something about her face that didn’t look like she was enjoying herself much. She also had red eyebrows, Ingrid noted, though they were not as red as her hair. And the color of her hair, well, red didn’t begin to cover it. It wasn’t red or orange or copper or rust either; it was all of these; it was a color to see from way off in the distance, a color to up-close stare at twice. And she was staring, she realized—she was just standing there staring at Mrs. Shepard like a total dork. Ingrid put down the dishrag and went quickly back into the dining room.

Ray was still sitting at the table, his chin in his hand.

“Mr. Shepard?”

“Yes?” He looked up at distractedly, as if he’d momentarily forgotten who she was. And then, focusing: “Yes, Ingrid?”

“Mrs. Shepard said I could help you take out the trash.”

“Did she.” He lifted his wineglass and drank off the rest of his wine. “And you’re eager for this assignment?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Very well, then.” Ray stood up. “Follow me to the dark recesses of the rubbish bins.”

They went outside and around the garage.

“I was wondering about the typing,” Ingrid said. “If you still wanted to maybe hire me to type your book for you.”

Ray, opening the door to the shed, was suddenly acutely aware of his life: thirty-nine years old and standing in front of a house with a large mortgage, unhappy at work, something going on with his wife that he couldn’t fathom, and this child of less than half his age stood there with her hands on her hips and asked him about the book he was supposed to be writing. At that moment the distance from the garbage cans to the typewriter on the second floor seemed almost insurmountable.

“Saturday,” he said to Ingrid in what he hoped was a hearty, optimistic tone. “I’ll spend the morning making sense of my notes and so forth and then—after lunch, say?—we can begin.”

“Cool,” she said, and grinned at him in the dusk, swinging the metal lid back onto the trash can with a clang. For her, he supposed, it was simply a matter of money.