Read Online Summer People by Brian Groh - Free Book Online Page B

pounding on the front door. He pulled on a pair of shorts, stumbled down the front stairs, and opened the door to find a sinewy woman in cargo pants and a yellow T-shirt carrying a bucket and sponge. She smiled primly as she entered, pretending not to notice Nathan’s bed head, and in return Nathan pretended not to notice that she’d nearly beaten the door off its frame.
    â€œYou called Monday saying,” she looked down at her clipboard, “Eleanor Broderick wanted a bath this morning.”
    Nathan noticed the nurse’s badge clipped to the woman’s pocket, nodded, and said, “That’s right.” Back home, Ralph had told him that Ellen employed a nursing service in Cleveland to help her bathe, so Nathan had scanned the local yellow pages to find someone to do the same for her here.
    After introducing the nurse to Ellen, he guided them upstairs to the bathroom, then told them he’d be back in half an hour. The sky was athreatening concrete slab, but Nathan wanted a little exercise, so he decided to walk the quarter-mile to Gilman’s grocery. Since the weather would likely keep them from the club, Nathan picked up a few videos and another two-liter bottle of soda. On his way out, he glanced over at the people trickling in and out of the post office.
    There was no urgent reason to check the mail that morning, except that Nathan was hoping for another letter from Sophie. It was possible, after all, that after mailing her last letter she’d been stricken with regret and self-doubt. Maybe her new, knuckle-dragging boyfriend had come over afterward and compelled her to wonder—as Nathan did—why she’d ever started dating him. Later that night, she might have cried and pulled out her pink stationery to write a new letter. A letter asking Nathan to love her again and pleading with him to return.
    That was the welcome missive that could be waiting in Ellen’s post office box. Except that it wasn’t. And Nathan knew it wasn’t. And going over there to find the box empty except for Pizza Hut and grocery coupons would only plunge him deeper into his current gloom.
    Unless, of course, the letter was there.
    Nathan ambled across the street, assuring himself that he was only going to check the box for Ellen’s mail. He’d been neglectful of this part of his job and now he was going to be more conscientious. An attractive, freckle-faced young woman smiled at Nathan as he opened the post office door, and he felt a surge of optimism about finding a letter from Sophie. Then he got himself under control. He forced himself to confront the fact that no letter from her would be there, and when he opened the box, finding it barren, he was for the most part prepared for the hollow tightening inside him.
    Â 
    R ain spat against Nathan’s face. A few women chirped happily on the front porch of Gilman’s, and a handsome thirtysomething couple, huddled beneath an umbrella, seemed amused by the weather and laughingly wished Nathan a good morning. Nathan nodded almost imperceptibly. He debated whether it was worth the trouble of setting down his bagof groceries to unzip the hood of his windbreaker and prevent the rain from dripping down the back of his neck. But he did not stop. The windy rain lashed against his eyes while, behind him, a car’s tires hissed against the wet pavement.
    â€œYou want a ride?” said a man, speaking through a narrow opening in the window of his rusty station wagon. Squinting to see through the rain, Nathan could make out a wide, big-boned face that took him a moment to recognize. Instead of a pastoral robe, Eldwin was wearing an army green sweater, and although Nathan hesitated, fearful of being trapped in a dully pious conversation, he accepted the offer and trudged to the other side of the car.
    â€œI’m probably getting your seat a little wet,” Nathan said, arranging his bag of groceries on top of the heap of old mail