Read Online Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) by Joseph Monninger - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joseph Monninger
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to a coat check girl. She used the moment to pull the front of her dress up. It did feel wonderful to wear a halter-top gown, to feel the warm air on her shoulders, to know, to be certain, that she looked good. And the music! She turned and saw the orchestra, all of the musicians dressed in burgundy jackets, their instruments gleaming. The sound was powerful. Then Charlie put his hand on her back and began steering her toward the terrace where people lined up for the bar. She observed people as they pooled around her, but she also felt his hand on her back, the strength of it as it flexed slightly to guide her. Once, when they moved around another couple, she felt his hand fall to her waist, his fingers brushing slightly above her hips, and blood rushed to her face and arms. It was the music, she tried to pretend, that caused the tiny riot in her stomach.
A small moment followed. She felt, remarkably, as though she could hover above herself, watching their progress across the floor. Here was a woman with a man, she thought, the most natural thing in the world. With each step, she felt herself casting away her caution. She did it deliberately, bravely, like a child consciously approaching the edge of a diving board. It felt, for an instant, as though a thousand tangled roots drifted behind her, each of them snapping and pulling her back to the earth, but she resisted. She took several deep breaths, glad to feel the warm spring air fill her lungs, glad to feel Charlie beside her. For once in her life, she decided, she would not try so desperately to manage things. For once she would let the world take her where it liked, and she felt something nervous and empty in her stomach, but joy, too. She understood what Cinderella knew: that the splendor of the ball was made sweeter by the approach of midnight, that the pumpkin carriage and the ratty chargers waited patiently to collect their passenger at the end of the night.
*Â *Â *
In dreams, Gordon turned and tossed, and he heard the cows mooing in their evening movement to the barn for milking. He heard a crow calling and the dishwasher running and the sound of his mother opening a window. It was spring, but he had no name for the season. Time meant little to him, especially in the dream, and he watched the saw-chuck guy creep forward and fire at a pair of robins perched on the white oak outside the parlor window. Then the saw-chuck guy became his father and he saw his father hanging upside down in a special bed, a bed like a hamster wheel, and someone promised him it was his father although it didnât look like anyone he knew. Then he listened to the wind slither down the chimney. He hadnât told his grandfather or mother, but he believed someone spoke through the chimney, someone lived inside it, because he had heard it calling his name. It was a secret, not a bad secret, a secret that lived in the house. Maybe, he thought in the tangled logic of his dream, his fatherâs voice had left the hospital and had come to live in the bricks and mortar of the fire flue. Gordon turned again in sleep and drew his knees up closer to his chest, and the saw-chuck man rolled once again and landed on his back, his stunned reaction prompting him to shower a spray of bullets at the ceiling.
*Â *Â *
The floor felt wonderfully slippery. That was a detail she needed to remember to tell Blake. It was a ball, of course, and naturally they would wax the floors properly, but Margaret loved the way the surface felt beneath her feet. And the flowers! She made a point of slowly surveying the room to take in the flowers. The planners had selected spring blossoms, understandably, and she easily identified irises and oxeye daisies, salvia and candy tuft, but someone had forced peonies and they gave off their strange, compelling fragrance in bursts of perfume as people passed. In the end, she decided, that was what most impressed her: the tender, exquisite details; the floor, the flowers,
A small moment followed. She felt, remarkably, as though she could hover above herself, watching their progress across the floor. Here was a woman with a man, she thought, the most natural thing in the world. With each step, she felt herself casting away her caution. She did it deliberately, bravely, like a child consciously approaching the edge of a diving board. It felt, for an instant, as though a thousand tangled roots drifted behind her, each of them snapping and pulling her back to the earth, but she resisted. She took several deep breaths, glad to feel the warm spring air fill her lungs, glad to feel Charlie beside her. For once in her life, she decided, she would not try so desperately to manage things. For once she would let the world take her where it liked, and she felt something nervous and empty in her stomach, but joy, too. She understood what Cinderella knew: that the splendor of the ball was made sweeter by the approach of midnight, that the pumpkin carriage and the ratty chargers waited patiently to collect their passenger at the end of the night.
*Â *Â *
In dreams, Gordon turned and tossed, and he heard the cows mooing in their evening movement to the barn for milking. He heard a crow calling and the dishwasher running and the sound of his mother opening a window. It was spring, but he had no name for the season. Time meant little to him, especially in the dream, and he watched the saw-chuck guy creep forward and fire at a pair of robins perched on the white oak outside the parlor window. Then the saw-chuck guy became his father and he saw his father hanging upside down in a special bed, a bed like a hamster wheel, and someone promised him it was his father although it didnât look like anyone he knew. Then he listened to the wind slither down the chimney. He hadnât told his grandfather or mother, but he believed someone spoke through the chimney, someone lived inside it, because he had heard it calling his name. It was a secret, not a bad secret, a secret that lived in the house. Maybe, he thought in the tangled logic of his dream, his fatherâs voice had left the hospital and had come to live in the bricks and mortar of the fire flue. Gordon turned again in sleep and drew his knees up closer to his chest, and the saw-chuck man rolled once again and landed on his back, his stunned reaction prompting him to shower a spray of bullets at the ceiling.
*Â *Â *
The floor felt wonderfully slippery. That was a detail she needed to remember to tell Blake. It was a ball, of course, and naturally they would wax the floors properly, but Margaret loved the way the surface felt beneath her feet. And the flowers! She made a point of slowly surveying the room to take in the flowers. The planners had selected spring blossoms, understandably, and she easily identified irises and oxeye daisies, salvia and candy tuft, but someone had forced peonies and they gave off their strange, compelling fragrance in bursts of perfume as people passed. In the end, she decided, that was what most impressed her: the tender, exquisite details; the floor, the flowers,
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