Read Online Summer's End by Kathleen Gilles Seidel - Free Book Online Page A

anyone would manufacture such a dress in a size 4T was beyond Phoebe. She couldn’t imagine anyone ever thinking it appropriate for a child.
    â€œPretty.” Claire patted the black fabric as if it were a stuffed lamb. “Pretty. Mine .”
    Claire was currently the youngest of three children, soon to be supplanted by another baby. “Mine” was an important word in her vocabulary. She held up her arms, wanting someone to take her shirt off her. Phoebe stripped her down to her little cotton underpants. Amy dropped the dress over her head, did up the buttons, and tied the sash.
    â€œShe looks like a little doll, Mom,” Ellie said.
    She did indeed. Claire had Amy’s childhood coloring; she was blonde with very fair skin. The black of the dress made her look as if she was made of alabaster.
    â€œIf I’d been allowed to wear a dress like that when I was four,” Amy sighed, “I would probably be a nuclear physicist today.”
    Phoebe looked up. Amy had pronounced “nuclear” properly, saying “nu-cle-ar” rather than “nuk-u-lar” as did most of the world. That seemed surprising.
    She turned back to Claire, who was now dancing and spinning in front of the mirror. The dress was billowing around her. Phoebe wasn’t sure what to do. The idea of wearing such a dress to a Midwestern college-town funeral was absurd. But Claire clearly adored it.
    She sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”
    Amy spoke. “If we care what people think of us, thenwe don’t let her wear it. But if we care about what she thinks of herself, then we do.”
    Phoebe stiffened. That was Mother. Mother would have said something like that. Who would have ever thought that she would hear her mother’s voice coming from her sister’s lips?
    And Mother never cared what people thought of her. “Then we let her wear it.”
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    Joyce protested Claire’s dress the most. “It’s so inappropriate for a child,” she fussed.
    Joyce herself was in a plain black business suit with an oxford cloth blouse. Without any accessories she looked unfinished and ill at ease. Joyce and Ian didn’t go to church, so their girls didn’t have Sunday dresses. Fourteen-year-old Maggie was in a much laundered black cotton skirt and white shirt which made her look more schoolgirlish than her younger cousin Ellie, and Phoebe suspected that Maggie would make Ellie pay for that. Emily, Joyce and Ian’s four-year-old, was in her father’s arms sobbing because she didn’t have a dress like Claire’s.
    Ian had the nerve to suggest that Claire not be allowed to wear her dress. “Emily is so upset that it’s going to make the day difficult for everyone.”
    â€œIt’s Mother’s funeral,” Phoebe said tightly. “The day is going to be difficult whatever a pair of four-year-olds wear. You had your chance. Amy offered to get clothes for Joyce and Maggie and Emily.”
    â€œWe didn’t think she was going to make such a production out of it.”
    â€œYou didn’t think Amy was going to make a production out of something? For God’s sake, Ian, how long have you known her?”
    They had never bickered like this before. It was because Mother wasn’t there. With Mother around there had never been anything to bicker about. If she had approved of the dress, Ian would have never questioned it. If she had sniffed at it, Phoebe would have never allowed Claire to wear it.
    They were on their own.
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    The church was full, and it was a big church, built in the days when people went to church every Sunday. All of Eleanor and Hal’s friends came as well as most of the administration. Many of Phoebe and Giles’s friends from Iowa City came too. Ian’s high school friends and their parents came. It made a difference, all those people coming, showing that they cared.
    Amy had no friends there. In fact, Phoebe