Read Online Death Qualified by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Wilhelm
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right, no? Think Celsy would like these?"
Tawna entered the kitchen. She wore tan slacks and an oversized scarlet sweatshirt, and she had on a pair of green and gold fish earrings, three inches long, with scales that flashed when she moved. She was tall and strongly built with wide shoulders, big bones. She kept her hair drawn back in a severe chignon, accentuating her bony face even more. The earrings looked wonderful on her. They would look wonderful on her daughter, Celsy, who was due home on Sunday from her first year at Juilliard.
Tawna took off the earrings, placed them on the table, and surveyed the assortment spread out before her. Speaking as if addressing the jewelry, she said, "But you didn't come to talk about earrings. You're bothered by something."
Hesitantly Nell said, "I thought I'd better tell you. My husband might show up, and I don't think he knows I'm not living here. He could walk in, I guess."
"Ah, the prodigal father. He walks in, James heaves him out. Or I do." She spread her hands palms up, as if to say, see how simple.
"Well, it might be better if he didn't actually get in.
Maybe you could lock your doors?"
"Whatever you like. Now, you sit, and I'll pour coffee, and you can help me decide which pieces are best for Celsy. And, Nell, if you want him heaved out of your house, we'll be there."
Nell turned down the coffee; they chatted for a few minutes, and she got up to leave. At the door Tawna said, "But, baby, you have any trouble with that man, you have two very good friends, very close. Remember that."
Back home again, Nell began to sort through the stuff she had refused to let Travis take with him. His basketball.
His cousins had a basketball, she had said firmly. Two frogs in a box. She took the box outside, removed the top, and left it under a rhododendron. She found Carol's newest Cabbage Patch doll under a sweater that had both elbows out. She had told Travis to forget it, even if it was his favorite. She held the doll, and suddenly clutched it hard against her breast and bowed her head, fighting tears.
It would be like this until it was over, until he had come and gone again, this time for good. Resolutely she put the doll on the couch and looked around the living room, cluttered with the children's stuff, messy. She decided she didn't give a damn about the mess and walked outside.
She did not go toward the big house this time but headed into the woods in the opposite direction. At the margin of woods, huckleberries thrived, and blackberries, and where the sun reached the ground unimpeded, a carpet of alpine strawberries grew luxuriantly. But within a few steps, the trees took over, and now it was fir trees, and deeper and deeper silence as the voice of the river faded and vanished.
The river was like her own heartbeat, a sound she was so accustomed to that she rarely heard it; she was always startled at the silence when the river noise failed.
The trees were mossy. Fallen branches, fallen trunks, rocks all were moss-covered; the effect was like being underwater where even the light was tinted by the ubiquitous green. She kept to a trail that climbed steadily, with many twists and turns, sometimes around boulders, around fallen trees too massive to step over, too mossy and slippery to climb over. And always upward. Chunks of lava poked up from the ground here and there, irregular brown shapes, sharp and pitted, or gleaming black and rounded.
Orange lichen thrived on the lava; ferns edged close to some of the bigger pieces. At a fork in the trail she kept to the right; this section became steeper and rockier, and then the land flattened in a clearing one hundred fifty feet across, forty feet deep, strewn with rocks, boulders, and lava up thrusts The clearing had been bisected by a waterway Century after
Tawna entered the kitchen. She wore tan slacks and an oversized scarlet sweatshirt, and she had on a pair of green and gold fish earrings, three inches long, with scales that flashed when she moved. She was tall and strongly built with wide shoulders, big bones. She kept her hair drawn back in a severe chignon, accentuating her bony face even more. The earrings looked wonderful on her. They would look wonderful on her daughter, Celsy, who was due home on Sunday from her first year at Juilliard.
Tawna took off the earrings, placed them on the table, and surveyed the assortment spread out before her. Speaking as if addressing the jewelry, she said, "But you didn't come to talk about earrings. You're bothered by something."
Hesitantly Nell said, "I thought I'd better tell you. My husband might show up, and I don't think he knows I'm not living here. He could walk in, I guess."
"Ah, the prodigal father. He walks in, James heaves him out. Or I do." She spread her hands palms up, as if to say, see how simple.
"Well, it might be better if he didn't actually get in.
Maybe you could lock your doors?"
"Whatever you like. Now, you sit, and I'll pour coffee, and you can help me decide which pieces are best for Celsy. And, Nell, if you want him heaved out of your house, we'll be there."
Nell turned down the coffee; they chatted for a few minutes, and she got up to leave. At the door Tawna said, "But, baby, you have any trouble with that man, you have two very good friends, very close. Remember that."
Back home again, Nell began to sort through the stuff she had refused to let Travis take with him. His basketball.
His cousins had a basketball, she had said firmly. Two frogs in a box. She took the box outside, removed the top, and left it under a rhododendron. She found Carol's newest Cabbage Patch doll under a sweater that had both elbows out. She had told Travis to forget it, even if it was his favorite. She held the doll, and suddenly clutched it hard against her breast and bowed her head, fighting tears.
It would be like this until it was over, until he had come and gone again, this time for good. Resolutely she put the doll on the couch and looked around the living room, cluttered with the children's stuff, messy. She decided she didn't give a damn about the mess and walked outside.
She did not go toward the big house this time but headed into the woods in the opposite direction. At the margin of woods, huckleberries thrived, and blackberries, and where the sun reached the ground unimpeded, a carpet of alpine strawberries grew luxuriantly. But within a few steps, the trees took over, and now it was fir trees, and deeper and deeper silence as the voice of the river faded and vanished.
The river was like her own heartbeat, a sound she was so accustomed to that she rarely heard it; she was always startled at the silence when the river noise failed.
The trees were mossy. Fallen branches, fallen trunks, rocks all were moss-covered; the effect was like being underwater where even the light was tinted by the ubiquitous green. She kept to a trail that climbed steadily, with many twists and turns, sometimes around boulders, around fallen trees too massive to step over, too mossy and slippery to climb over. And always upward. Chunks of lava poked up from the ground here and there, irregular brown shapes, sharp and pitted, or gleaming black and rounded.
Orange lichen thrived on the lava; ferns edged close to some of the bigger pieces. At a fork in the trail she kept to the right; this section became steeper and rockier, and then the land flattened in a clearing one hundred fifty feet across, forty feet deep, strewn with rocks, boulders, and lava up thrusts The clearing had been bisected by a waterway Century after
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