Read Online The Four Temperaments by Yona Zeldis McDonough - Free Book Online Page B

she was so much shorter, Ginny had to rise up on her toes and tilt her head back. So intent were they that they didn't even notice Ruth, who was too shocked to move or to say anything, in the doorway. It was only when Isobel uttered, in her lilting, baby way, some gurgling sound in response to having seen her father that Gabriel finally lifted his face from Ginny's and returned Ruth's horrified stare.

GABRIEL
    T
he first
time Gabriel saw Penelope, she was sitting in front of the Avery Library at Columbia University, eating an apple. She had been wearing a rose-colored dress of a lightweight material (in those days, she still wore colors) that left her shoulders and throat bare. As Gabriel approached, he found himself mesmerized by her skin, so pale and beautiful, as if cream swirled through her veins, lending both texture and color to its pigment. Her hair—dark, thick and shining—seemed to gleam against her pallor. Her large, dark eyes appraised him coolly. Gabriel stood there, transfixed. The red, interwoven bricks of the walkway seemed to glow with an unnatural incandescence; the sky grew brighter and more brilliantly blue; the green leaves of the shrubs were animate and electric.
    â€œI have another one,” she said finally.
    â€œAnother what?” he said, confused but willing to be drawn in.
    â€œApple. It's right here.” She reached into her canvas carryall, and handed him the fruit. When he bit into it, he thought he had never tasted anything so delectable. And later, much later, when he had brought her to his apartment on Amsterdam Avenue, removed her clothing and pressed his lips—gently, reverently—to her face, her throat, her soft, smooth belly, he thought the same thing.
    Gabriel was studying architecture at Columbia. He knew that he was a disappointment to his father, Oscar, who hoped he would become a musician. “You have the talent,” Oscar had said, many times, when Gabriel was growing up, “I know you do, I can feel it in you.” The talent, maybe, thought Gabriel, but the drive, never. Oscar had been Gabriel's first music teacher, just as he was William's and Ben's. He actually bought Gabriel a half-sized violin—most people rented rather than purchased these tiny instruments—when he was so young that he still sucked his thumb. “Do you really think he's ready?” Ruth had said, stroking Gabriel's hair.
    â€œDo you know how it's held?” Oscar asked, handing Gabriel the violin. Gabriel had seen his father do this hundreds of times; he had heard the sounds that the instrument made. He wanted to please Oscar, so he reached out his arms and held it in the way he had observed.
    â€œHe's a natural,” beamed Oscar, and the matter was settled. Every afternoon that he was available, Oscar gave Gabriel a music lesson. On the days when there was no lesson, he was to practice: Ruth saw to that. And at first it seemed to work fine. Gabriel was a shy, serious child who sought to please; pleasing meant holding the violin, and manipulating the bow in just the right way, so that the sounds emitting from it were ones that made Oscar smile rather than frown. It wasn't so hard; he could do it.
    It was later that all the battles came. Gabriel resented the practicing, time when he could have been riding his bicycle, or drawing or hanging out in Riverside Park with a joint and his friends. Then William and Ben had to have lessons too. First violin lessons, with Oscar, although later, William settled on the piano—“A lowbrow instrument, but better than nothing,” observed their father—and Ben, the flute. The apartment was filled with music; between the various lessons and practice times of the boys, and Oscar's own practicing, there was scarcely a quiet moment. When there was, Oscar would play one of his records—he had a collection of nearly one thousand albums—on the stereo system that dominated the living room. And if Oscar