Read Online Nine Women by Shirley Ann Grau - Free Book Online Page A

him, Harry thought. Sweat gleamed through his thin blond hair. “Maybe you should go a little slower on the drinks, Bill. Can’t have you passing out.”
    Bill ignored him and continued staring at Myra, who had finished with the flowers. “So old Hugh’s dead. What’d he die of?”
    “The paper didn’t say.”
    “Old age, I guess. What was he? Eighty?”
    “Seventy-nine.”
    “I sure hope Jane wrote her a note, but she probably forgot that too.”
    Harry stood up, waving and calling, “Myra, good to see you. Come sit with us for a bit.”
    Myra smiled politely and warmly while she struggled to remember their names. It was so long from summer to summer, she thought. Hugh had been good at names. Hugh had always remembered for her.
    “How nice to see you again.” A name popped into her memory: Harry Marshall. That was right. And Bill something or other. “You both look wonderful,” she said, brightening up her smile. “Just wonderful.”
    “We’re still at the same old table.” Bill laughed. “And that’s probably the same old umbrella up there.”
    “Same table, same umbrella, same drinks,” Harry said. “Yours was a gin and tonic, right?”
    “You have a fantastic memory.” She sat down carefully in the canvas deck chair. Her back was very stiff today.
    “I’ll get the drinks,” Harry said.
    “One for me, brother-in-law,” Bill called after him.
    He was pretty drunk already, Myra noticed, his skin flushed so deeply that blood seemed ready to ooze from each pore. “And how is your wife?” she inquired politely.
    “Jane’s fine. She’s down there on the beach with the grandchildren. But you knew about Edna?”
    “Last summer seems such a long time ago.”
    “I know you remember Edna. Great friend of Jane’s. Like a sister really, not just a summer friend. They used to have lunch together every Tuesday all winter long. Well, she died.”
    “Oh yes, of course,” Myra said, “I do remember her.” A short thin wiry woman who played a fine game of tennis. Myra had disliked her, her nervousness and constant movement.
    “Cancer,” Bill said, wiping the sweat from his bald head. “Everywhere, even her brain. Doctors couldn’t do anything. They didn’t even try.”
    All that flitting vibration stopped, Myra thought wearily, all those jerking muscles and racing feet.
    Harry Marshall put the tray of drinks down on the table. “Here’s to the summer!”
    Bill lifted his glass. “To us old folks. We made another year.” Then blushing, remembering, “I didn’t really mean that the way it sounded, Myra. I’m awfully sorry about Hugh. I really am. He was one great guy.”
    “I don’t talk about it any more.” Myra saw relief smooth out the squinched agitation on his face.
    “We bought a place in the Bahamas,” Harry said, changing the subject. “A little pink cottage with bougainvillea on the fence. The house is all right, but it was that bougainvillea that sold me. It’s pink like you wouldn’t believe.”
    Bill said, “And right away Jane’s got to go see her dear brother’s house. And once she sees it, she wants one too. So we’re looking. The funniest thing, Myra, would you believe they’ve got a beach club that looks almost exactly like this one.”
    “Except for the pine trees,” Harry added. “No pine trees.”
    “So you have an eternal summer,” Myra said. “How nice, how very nice.”
    Harry beamed. “What a wonderful way to look at it, Myra. I suppose that’s exactly what it is. We’re retired and living in an eternal summer. Damn poetic, that’s what it is.”
    Liam Thorpe, who was stretched full length on one of the blue padded lounges, lifted his head and squinted across the deck. “Isabel, isn’t that Myra Rowland?”
    His wife, who was lying face down, said, “I heard she came early this year, a couple of weeks ago.”
    “Did you remember to write her after Hugh died?”
    “I always remember.”
    “She came alone this year?”
    “In a manner of