Read Online Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards - Free Book Online

unable to get the punch line.
    The whole family felt they had done something wrong.One night Adele saw a group of cars in Myhrra’s yard.
    “Go on up, go on up,” Adele said to Rita, excitedly. “I’ll baby-sit, I will I will. Go on up, they’re probably playing auction or something.”
    “I’ll behave – I’ll behave,” Milly screeched, running about the house. “I’ll behave –”
    Rita got dressed and went out, only to come back a few minutes later. When Adele pestered her she got angry.
    “They’re having a bridge party up there,” she said. “I’m not going to intrude on a bunch of ladies sitting down to play a game of bridge. I have a load of ironing to do as it is.”
    “Ha, you could beat any of them,” Adele screamed, throwing a sudden tantrum and throwing a dishcloth over Milly’s head, and then kicking a chair.
    “I haven’t played bridge in my life,” Rita said.
    And then for some reason Adele got doubly angry at this.
    Rita, with her loose top and her ponytail and her scuffed shoes, smiled and asked Adele and Milly to help her make divinity fudge, but Adele went upstairs instead and played an old Beatles record, while Milly stood at her door begging her to come out.

    It was a tradition for Myhrra to take Adele for a drive on Tuesday afternoons. On one particular day Myhrra was quieter than usual, and Adele, sitting on the passenger side of the car and staring out the window at the river, past houses and fields, tried desperately to think of something nice to say, but every time Myhrra glanced at her she would promptly look at her boots.
    Myhrra stopped on a lane and looked at the field with some apple trees in it She got out of the car and stayed outside for a long time, leaning against the hood and staring, smoking one cigarette after another. It was the field that she and Mike, her ex-husband, had at one time owned, and which they sold during their divorce.
    “Do you want me to come outside, My?” Adele said, rolling down the window half an inch. “What are you thinking about?”
    “H’m?”
    “What are you thinking?”
    “Nothing so much.”
    “I have to pee, My.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “I have to real bad. My back teeth are floating about, the school bus has already gone down river.”
    “I know, I know, Delly dear. Just a moment, I have to pee too.”
    Another few minutes went by and Myhrra stayed exactly where she was, with the red kerchief she wore blowing up in a gust of autumn wind, and the smell of pebbles.
    “I was invited to your house for supper tonight, Delly hon, but I can’t go. Tell your mom I’ll see her tomorrow.”
    Adele looked at the big rabbit paw on the mirror and stroked it for good luck.
    Myhrra didn’t visit them for some time, spending more time with her friends from across the river. One night just after Rita had closed the drapes, they heard Myhrra’s car turn in their yard, and blow the horn, but no one this time went to the window.

    Myhrra still made it to the hospital every Wednesday. One day a voice called out to her as she passed a room.
    “Hey!” he said. The voice belonged to Allain Garret. He was an old man from down river who worked in the woods. He had seven daughters and five sons, worked cutting pulp, and had a huge television in the centre of his living room, with one family chair. The floor was brown tiled and a thousand hockey games were watched from this chair. During the 1972 series with Russia, he had taken off the front door so his friends could sit in the porch and watch it. But because so many people stopped in at the house to watch it, he was himself pushed to the background, and ended up watching it, leaning through one of the porch windows, while people half stood and half crouched in front of him, and his nieces and nephews sat on the stairs. One of his little nieces, Gidget, who was eight at the time with big brown eyes, leaned on his shoulder and went to sleep in the sun. When Canada scored the winning goal, he