Read Online Ordinary People by Judith Guest - Free Book Online Page A

same time. Tired. His face is drawn. He has an urge to shield him, but how? There is no way. No way at all. He wants to give him a present of some kind, something to keep the currents of sound moving between them. He says, “Your mother and I were talking about going to London sometime.”
    “Not for Christmas?” There is an odd look on his face that Cal cannot identify. Fear? Anger? It is gone before he can be sure.
    “We haven’t decided when,” he says. “I thought maybe in the spring. No, this Christmas I thought we’d just stay around here.”
    “Yeah, that’d be fine. Unless—if everybody else wants to go for Christmas, I’ll go, that’s okay. I don’t want to spoil things. I mean, if she wants to go, I’ll go.”
    Beth is in the doorway. “I’m ready, Cal.”
    “Okay. In a second.”
    “We’re late.” She moves down the hallway to get her coat.
    He is on his feet, but he doesn’t want to leave yet. Conrad is looking up at him. There is nothing to worry about; he knows that. He has to get over this feeling of panic every time he leaves him alone in the house. He’s a big boy. He will be eighteen years old in January. Remember it.
    “We’ll be over at the Murrays’, did I tell you that?”
    “No. Fine.”
    “The number’s in the book. Philip Murray, on Anhinga Boulevard.”
    “Okay.” And he knows what Conrad is thinking: What would I need to call you for?
     
     
    In the car, she says to him, “I told you he’d go if you asked him.”
    “He doesn’t want to, though.”
    She shrugs. “Well, it’s too late now, anyway.”
    She gave up on this, suddenly and simply. It was not like her. He hasn’t realized until this minute that it has been several weeks since the subject of London was mentioned. Now he feels at once relief and guilt.
    “We’ll go in the spring,” he says. “I promise.”
    She doesn’t answer.
    “Who’s going to be there tonight?” Testing. Her tone when she answers will tell him if she is angry.
    “Well, the Murrays. It’s their house.” She slides over next to him. Happily grateful, he squeezes her hand. Wonderful, unpredictable girl. “And Mac and Ann Kline. Ed and Marty Genthe. And us.”
    “Why us? We hardly know the Murrays.”
    “That’s why. That’s why you have people over, darling. To get to know them better.”
    He does not want to know Phil Murray any better. He has played golf with him three times. He knows him well enough. The first time, he was told Phil’s reasons for joining the golf club. “I’m an insurance salesman, Cal. A damn good one, too.” He had laughed and said that he had all the insurance he needed. “That’s what you think.” Phil grinned at him. On discovering what Cal did for a living, he spent the rest of the round telling jokes about crooked lawyers. During the second round, Cal confirmed his earlier suspicion that he cheated on the golf course, saw his ball land with a thud in the trap; when they arrived at the shot, it hung, miraculously, on the lush green edge. Worse, Phil was fakily delighted. “Hey, what a break! That was close, huh?” Cal thought he was the only one who noticed, but afterward, in the locker room, Mac Kline shook his head, “Who does he think he’s kidding?” and at lunch someone cracked a joke about the best traps being the ones with the thickest lips.
    He says, “Let’s go to the movies, instead.”
    “Don’t be negative.” She squeezes his hand.
    “Then, let’s not stay too late.”
    She is looking at herself in the rear-view mirror. “Already ? You don’t usually say that until we pull in the driveway. Anyway, you’ve never even been to their house before. How do you know you won’t have fun?”
    “I can read my mind. It says, Stay home tonight, read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, do something constructive with your life.”
    “Everybody has to eat,” she says.
     
     
    They live only blocks away, in a wide, square-pillared house at the top of a gentle slope known