Read Online Sweet Water by Christina Baker Kline - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Christina Baker Kline
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right was Red Pond Road. I slowed almost to a stop, looking for number 29.
Third from the end on the right, it was powder blue, with large black numbers on the door and daisies and marigolds planted around low bushes on either side of the entrance—almost exactly as I had imagined. When I pulled into the driveway my hands were trembling. I glimpsed a woman with short white hair in the front window, and my breath caught in my throat. Suddenly I couldn’t imagine what kind of insanity had led me here, and I sat, paralyzed, gripping the steering wheel. I did not want to get out.
For a long, timeless moment I clung to the car, a no-man’s-land between two sandwiching worlds, and contemplated the enormity of what I was doing. Without thinking too much about it, or even understanding why, I had uprooted myself from everything familiar, everything I cared about, exchanging the comfort of a life lived in the present for the fractured uncertainty of a forward journey into the past. I didn’t even know what I was searching for.
The front door opened and the woman emerged. She pulled the door shut with one hand and smoothed her hair with the other. I could make out soft folds of skin, glasses with clear plastic frames, pink lipstick, hair like spun tufts of cotton. She was dressed in a polyester outfit, apple-green slacks and a green-and-white floral blouse belted loosely with a ribbon of the same material. On her feet she wore white sneakers and suntan hose, which I could see as she came down the three steps to the path. She moved slowly but without hesitation. Her step was sure and light.
Sitting up straight, I combed through my hair with my hands, brushed off my T-shirt, and ran my tongue over my teeth. By the time I’d grasped the handle and pushed the door open with my elbow, the old woman had already padded down to the end of the drive. She stood five feet from the car, her tiny hands at her sides, craning her neck to see in.
She was smaller than I had imagined and neater, like a package.She kept a respectable distance and waved. Her eyes were large and wondering behind bifocal lenses. Her smile wasn’t sure.
“Welcome,” she said. “Well, well, well.”
I got out of the car stiff-legged and wary. My body didn’t move the way I wanted it to. I thought of New York and its blessing of anonymity; I wanted to sink from this scrutiny, back into the car, back onto the road going north, into the cloak of night. The air smelled of trees and tar.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “Cassandra. You take after your father.”
I went up to hug her, and it was like hugging a fluffy, small-boned bird.
S he’s tall like Amory, with long narrow bones and those gray-blue eyes and fine, wavy hair the color of straw. Her nose is freckled and her lips are like a new bruise. Long thin fingers and soft baby nails. She wears baggy shorts that don’t show her shape and sleeveless T-shirts layered on top of each other, and she walks like a boy. Until she drove up in that old station wagon with books all piled in the back seat, I didn’t quite believe she ever would.
I watched out the kitchen window with a dust rag in my hand. The license plate said “New Jersey, The Garden State.” After a minute she looked in here and I ducked behind the curtain. I didn’t want her to think I’d been standing there watching and hadn’t come out to say hello.
She called from Roanoke last night to tell me she was on her way. This morning I put on some nice clothes and even perfume, and dusted, and made a pound cake and green beans, but it didn’t seem possible she’d really come until I saw her with my own eyes, sitting in that beat-up old embarrassment of a car on the road in front of my house.
A fter getting a couple of bags out of the back I locked the wagon.
“Nobody’s going to rob you here,” my grandmother said. She sniffed and peered into the car. “It doesn’t look like you’ve got a whole lot anybody’d want, anyway.” She
Third from the end on the right, it was powder blue, with large black numbers on the door and daisies and marigolds planted around low bushes on either side of the entrance—almost exactly as I had imagined. When I pulled into the driveway my hands were trembling. I glimpsed a woman with short white hair in the front window, and my breath caught in my throat. Suddenly I couldn’t imagine what kind of insanity had led me here, and I sat, paralyzed, gripping the steering wheel. I did not want to get out.
For a long, timeless moment I clung to the car, a no-man’s-land between two sandwiching worlds, and contemplated the enormity of what I was doing. Without thinking too much about it, or even understanding why, I had uprooted myself from everything familiar, everything I cared about, exchanging the comfort of a life lived in the present for the fractured uncertainty of a forward journey into the past. I didn’t even know what I was searching for.
The front door opened and the woman emerged. She pulled the door shut with one hand and smoothed her hair with the other. I could make out soft folds of skin, glasses with clear plastic frames, pink lipstick, hair like spun tufts of cotton. She was dressed in a polyester outfit, apple-green slacks and a green-and-white floral blouse belted loosely with a ribbon of the same material. On her feet she wore white sneakers and suntan hose, which I could see as she came down the three steps to the path. She moved slowly but without hesitation. Her step was sure and light.
Sitting up straight, I combed through my hair with my hands, brushed off my T-shirt, and ran my tongue over my teeth. By the time I’d grasped the handle and pushed the door open with my elbow, the old woman had already padded down to the end of the drive. She stood five feet from the car, her tiny hands at her sides, craning her neck to see in.
She was smaller than I had imagined and neater, like a package.She kept a respectable distance and waved. Her eyes were large and wondering behind bifocal lenses. Her smile wasn’t sure.
“Welcome,” she said. “Well, well, well.”
I got out of the car stiff-legged and wary. My body didn’t move the way I wanted it to. I thought of New York and its blessing of anonymity; I wanted to sink from this scrutiny, back into the car, back onto the road going north, into the cloak of night. The air smelled of trees and tar.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “Cassandra. You take after your father.”
I went up to hug her, and it was like hugging a fluffy, small-boned bird.
S he’s tall like Amory, with long narrow bones and those gray-blue eyes and fine, wavy hair the color of straw. Her nose is freckled and her lips are like a new bruise. Long thin fingers and soft baby nails. She wears baggy shorts that don’t show her shape and sleeveless T-shirts layered on top of each other, and she walks like a boy. Until she drove up in that old station wagon with books all piled in the back seat, I didn’t quite believe she ever would.
I watched out the kitchen window with a dust rag in my hand. The license plate said “New Jersey, The Garden State.” After a minute she looked in here and I ducked behind the curtain. I didn’t want her to think I’d been standing there watching and hadn’t come out to say hello.
She called from Roanoke last night to tell me she was on her way. This morning I put on some nice clothes and even perfume, and dusted, and made a pound cake and green beans, but it didn’t seem possible she’d really come until I saw her with my own eyes, sitting in that beat-up old embarrassment of a car on the road in front of my house.
A fter getting a couple of bags out of the back I locked the wagon.
“Nobody’s going to rob you here,” my grandmother said. She sniffed and peered into the car. “It doesn’t look like you’ve got a whole lot anybody’d want, anyway.” She
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