SOME AFTERNOONS HE BROUGHT CRACKERS AND CHEESE from his grandfather’s house together with a thermos of coffee. He also brought them books, though he read more than she did. For some time now he’d been checking books out of the old limestone-block Carnegie Library on the corner of Ash Street, where the librarian was a thin unhappy woman who took care of her invalid mother when she wasn’t at work and who during the day conducted the library as if it were a church. He had found the shelves of books he liked and brought the books home every two weeks, summer and winter, and now he took to bringing them to the shed to read lying on the floor beside her.
She took more and more to the practice of daydreaming and wishing, more so now in the absence of her father and in the new desolation that filled the house since her mother had turned so sad and lonely. An hour might go by in the shed with little or no talking, and then watching him read she would eventually begin to tease him, tickling his cheek with a piece of thread, blowing thinly in his ear, until he would put his book down and push her, and then they would begin to push back and forth and to wrestle, and once it happened that she rolled on top of him, and while her face was so close above his she dropped her head suddenly and kissed him on the mouth, and they both stopped and stared, and she kissed him again. Then she rolled off.
What did you do that for?
I felt like it, she said.
AND ONCE HER LITTLE SISTER OPENED THE DOOR OF THE shed in the afternoon, late in that week of Christmas vacation, and found them reading on the floor with the blankets over them. What are you doing?
Shut the door, Dena said.
The little girl stepped inside and shut the door and stood looking at them. What are you doing there on the floor?
Nothing.
Let me under too.
You have to be quiet.
Why?
Because I said so. Because we’re reading.
All right. I will. Let me in.
She crawled under the blanket with them.
No, you have to be over here, Dena said. This is my place next to him.
So for a while the two sisters and the boy lay on the floor under the blankets, reading books in the dim candlelight, with the sun falling down outside in the alley, the three of them softly talking a little, drinking coffee from a thermos, and what was happening in the houses they’d come from seemed, for that short time, of little importance.
28
WHEN RAYMOND CAME UP TO THE HOUSE IN THE AFTERNOON of New Year’s Day after feeding in the winter pasture, shoving hay and protein pellets onto the frozen ground in front of the shaggy milling cattle, he removed his overshoes and canvas coveralls at the kitchen door and went back through the house to shave and wash up, then mounted the stairs to his bedroom and put on dark slacks and the new blue wool shirt Victoria had given him for Christmas. When he came downstairs into the kitchen, Victoria was cooking chicken and dumplings in a big blued pot for their holiday dinner and Katie was standing on a chair at the table stirring flour and water in a red bowl. Each had a white dish towel tied about her waist, and Victoria’s heavy black hair was pulled away from her face and her cheeks were flushed from the cooking.
She turned to look at him from the stove. You’re all dressed up, she said.
I put on your shirt.
I see that. It looks good on you. It looks just right.
So what can I do? he said. What else needs to be done here to get ready for dinner?
You could set the table.