Read Online The All of It: A Novel by Jeannette Haien - Free Book Online

ourselves—” She fidgeted; then, in a rush: “that we were outlyers.”
    He let her rest on the word, until: “You see, Father, the others, they’d all been raised on the place or close by to it and, well, they were thick , you know, in that way people are who’re known to each other right down to their socks. Some of them,” she hastened on, “were even knit by blood—cousins, and the cook an aunt to the head gardener’s wife—ties like that. But kin or not, like I said, they were that thick.” She emphasized her point by entwining her fingers.
    “Ladled from the same pot of broth, as my mother used to say.”
    “Aye,” she nodded, unsmiling, going on: “They’dtalk, you know, on and on about what they’d done together as kids, games they’d played and how one’d tricked the other, and all manner of celebrations and affairs they’d been in on, picnics and parties and sings and dances and the like, and who’d first walked out with who when they’d got to an age to think of such things and”—she raised her chin—“Kevin and myself…well, you know, Father, of our childhood, its irregularities as you might say, and being from the reaches how all we’d ever known for company was ourselves and our dad—” She lifted her shoulders in a concluding way, waited, then: “The worst for us was when we’d be sitting with them, invited by them, and they’d go into what Kevin came to call their ‘private gaggles,’ when something—we’d never have the least idea what—would set them off onto wigwagging and making faces, not a word of sense having passed between them, you understand, and us sitting right there, simple to what they were going on about….” Her mouth tightened: “It kept us forever awkward,” she finished.
    “As indeed it would,” he said. Then, risking the insinuation: “It must have served to drive you and Kevin in on yourselves, closer together—”
    She stayed him with a responding look that combined sorrow and futility. “Mostly,” she said hollowly, “it served to hurt our pride.”
    “That too, of course,” he said with a clumsyrepairing haste, ruing deeply the venturing which, he could tell, had damaged her belief in his understanding. Fraught, he made a movement with his hands as of erasing, then plunged on with: “They must have been curious about you and Kevin, were they not?”
    “At first,” she answered flatly, looking off.
    “Plied you with questions, did they?”
    “At first, like I said. The girls with me more than the men with Kevin.”
    “Naturally,” touching a finger to his forehead, “they’d have wanted to know when and where you first took notice of each other, and how soon you were married after you first walked out together. That kind of thing.”
    She nodded.
    “And?”
    “And?” meeting his gaze.
    “You gave them some sort of satisfaction, of course?”
    “In my fashion I did.”
    “In your fashion, Enda?”
    She stiffened and came back at him with: “That I lied to them? Is that what you’re getting at with me, Father?”
    “Given your circumstances, I assume that you lied, Enda. And please don’t take that attitude with me. What I’m trying to get at is the scope of the lie. Its magnitude, its effects—”
    “Oh,” she mused, “I just said we’d known each other all our lives, Kevin and myself, and that our getting linked, well, that when we got old enough, it just seemed like the next thing to do. I made it sound ever so middling and dull….” Her mouth lifted in a shrewd smile: “There was one girl full of airs, always peeking at herself in the glass, and she put it to me early on in front of all the others: ‘What was the cut of your wedding dress?’ I asked her back, ‘God in heaven, where would the likes of me ever get a wedding dress?’ That finished the curiosity.” She laughed. “Have you ever noticed, Father, how the ordinary sets to rest a person’s interest in yourself?”
    At his according laughter,