Read Online Rowing in Eden by Elizabeth Evans - Free Book Online

part of the country.
    Not for the first time, Franny felt an almost embarrassing advantage at having been born so much later than the huntsmen—as if she were sighted, and they the defenseless blind. Impossible the world had ever been so old and gray and humorless. At the same time, what a wonder that the lake rocks in the corner of the big fireplace behind the huntsmen were clearly the very same rocks that could be seen in that corner of the fireplace if she were to trot outside, now, sixty-eight years later!
    This thought elated Franny so, she slipped the photo from its hook on the wall and started with it toward the stairs. She would show it to Rosamund. It was not so much Rosamund as her parents and Martie who objected to her being at the parties. Before this summer, Franny had always been allowed to wander through the noisy affairs her sisters threw when Brick and Peg went out of town, so why couldn’t Franny just call Rosamund aside and ask if Rosamund felt as Franny did about the photograph?
    â€œYou two need to dance!” That was Martie’s voice, down below. “Come on,” Martie said, “I’ll put on the Duke, and you can show us how it’s done!” Which meant Martie spoke to Peg and Brick.
    You sure you want a couple of old geezers out on the floor?
    Well, just one song.
    â€œTake the A-Train,” Martie put on the stereo, and Franny peered down through the banisters to watch her parents dance in the middle of that politely smiling crew in the living room. They were good—especially Peg, moving on her toes as if she wore high heels instead of bare feet. Cheek to cheek they danced, Brick rumbling his shoulders around now and then, laughing, grinning as he spun Peg across the floor. Afterward, the guests applauded, and Brick said, “Now, that’s what I call music!” A girl guest said that Brick ought to play them a tune on the piano, but Peg said, Not tonight, kids , she and Brick were going out for a walk, he’d promised.
    Which Franny understood to mean that Brick was drinking too much. “Too hard,” Peg would say, as if the drinking involved work, strain. There was a reason Brick sometimes drank “too hard.” Peg had explained this to Franny after Brick had crashed into the whatnot shelf at the home of Peg’s mother and broken all of Delpha Ackerman’s beloved Hummel figurines, and Delpha had called him a disgrace. Back at home again—Franny had been a sixth-grader at the time—while Peg and Franny tested the strands of colored lights for the Christmas tree, Peg had told Franny that her dad sometimes drank too hard because—here Peg took one of those breaths that Franny knew hurt when it expanded in your chest— because duringhis first year in law school, he and a girl had been in a car accident. “That girl died, Franny, and your dad claimed he was driving, but—he wasn’t.”
    Why’d he do that? Franny had protested. Solemnly, Peg had picked up, then set down, a novelty bulb that remained in its box each year, as none of the Wahls’ strands had a receptacle for the thing. Voice choked with tenderness, Peg said, “To protect her honor. Because she’d been drinking. Anyway, the point is, it’s that memory—and having people think he was responsible—that’s what makes him drink so hard. Now. Sometimes.”
    Franny had not known how to respond to this sad and terrible story, but she knew she must respond, her mother was waiting, giving a brisk shake to the felt skirt that would go around the base of the Christmas tree—such a pretty thing, with its red felt reindeers with the sequin bridles that Peg had stitched on, one by one—
    â€œWell!” Peg cast a sidelong glance Franny’s way. “I thought you were mature enough to understand, but I guess I was mistaken.”
    â€œNo!” Franny threw her arms around her mother’s waist, and insisted