Read Online A Good House by Bonnie Burnard - Free Book Online Page A

whatsoever to be gained by crying or complaining or quitting, but how could she say such things to this pale woman in this bed? If there were other things you could say, they were not presenting themselves today.
    But it wasn’t about that, not at all. When Sylvia continued she said only, “We have known each other all this time and never really been friends until now.”
    Margaret put the mirror down on her lap and bravely reached to tuck a strand of hair behind Sylvia’s ear. “Oh, well,” she said. “Separate lives.”
    â€œBut not now,” Sylvia said. “Not any more.”
    Margaret nodded.
    â€œI need you to help me with something,” Sylvia said. “If you could.”
    â€œYes,” Margaret said, anticipating something practical now.
    â€œSome time soon this is all going to get quickly worse,” Sylvia said. “Like everyone else, I’ve been thinking about the kids.” She stopped for a minute to measure her words. “I’d guess Patrick will go to anger, and Paul to tears. Daphne, I just don’t know. Is there any way you could…?”
    â€œYes,” Margaret said, not because she understood what was expected of her but only because Sylvia believed it had to be a woman, otherwise she would not have asked. And here she was, a woman. “Yes,” she said. “I will.”
    Margaret sometimes showed up with a few groceries and one time books from the library, some light history, a couple of dog-eared mysteries, but none of the books got read. Sylvia did ask for a good atlas, which Margaret drove into London to buy, and she spent some of her hours studying the changes in the world.
    After a few weeks Margaret brought Daphne in to sit on her mother’s bed and gave her the tray with the china soup plate and the silver spoon. She stood at the dusty picture window until the soup was half gone, asking Daphne questions about her schoolwork and her friends. She knew who Daphne’s girlfriends were because she often saw them walking on the street together uptown, nudging shoulders as they talked, still a bit playful but serious too, newly careful with Daphne and with each other. You could see it in their posture, in their stern faces, the eyes that brazenly searched another’s eyes with the promise of understanding. None of the girls came inside the house now, the farthest they could be coaxed was just inside the kitchen door, but this was easily recognized as one more clumsy, misplaced, well-meant gesture of respect.
    As Daphne finished spooning the soup to her mother, Margaret wondered how the boys would feel if she sent them out to the dusty windows with some newspapers and a bucket of vinegar water and then after the dishes were cleaned up she got her Harris tweed coat and her purse, said her goodnights, and let herself out the back door.
    *   *   *
    THE GRANDPARENTS USUALLY dropped in after supper, after Margaret had left. They were sometimes accompanied by one of Sylvia’s brothers and his wife or by her sister from out of town or by Bill’s brother from Windsor with his cheerful wife and their young children. Kitchen chairs were carried in and placed haphazardly around the room, facing Sylvia. The nieces and nephews were allowed to sit briefly on the bed to embrace their aunt and then they sprawled out on the carpet to play secret little whispering games or snap or jumping jacks.
    The adults tried to talk about things Sylvia might find interesting, Sandy Koufax and the Brooklyn Dodgers, Lassie, James Dean being killed like that, but everyone listened too politely, too attentively to the speaker, almost all of them were too unnaturally quick to laugh or offer agreement. Sylvia heard their words not as sentences deliberately formed to tell a person something but as dull, one-at-a-time thuds against the dull silence that had begun to wall her in. She heard the words as small, well-meant blows against