Read Online The Joyce Maynard Collection by Joyce Maynard - Free Book Online

vein in his neck flicker. My mother’s eyes moved to the window: no sign of a car. Whoever it was came on foot.
    You go, Henry, she said. Just let them know I’m occupied.
    It was Mr. Jervis from down the street, with a bucket of late-season peaches. We’ve got so many of these, we don’t know what to do with them all, he said. I thought your mother might find a use for them.
    I took the bucket. He remained on the stoop, as if there was more to say.
    Big weekend coming, he said. They say it’ll get up to ninety-five by tomorrow.
    Yup, I said. I saw that in the paper.
    We’ve got the grandkids coming over Sunday. You’re welcome to come by, jump in the pool, if you’re around. Cool off.
    They had an aboveground pool in their backyard, which sat empty most of the summer, except when the Jervises’ son’s family came to visit from Connecticut. A girl about my age who used an inhaler and liked to pretend she was an android, and a boy around three years old, who probably peed in the pool. I wasn’t tempted.
    I told him thanks.
    Your mother home? he asked. It was a needless question, not only because our car was out front. Everyone on our street had to know my mother hardly ever went anywhere.
    She’s occupied.
    You might want to let her know, in case she hasn’t heard. There’s some guy on the loose from Stinchfield, the state pen. They’re saying on the radio he was last spotted out at the shopping plaza, coming into town. No reports of any hitchhikers or stolen cars, which means he could still be in the area. Wife’s got her panties in a twist, convinced he’s headed straight for our house.
    My mother’s sewing, I said.
    I just thought I’d let your mother know. Her being on her own. You have any problems, give a jingle.

Chapter 7
    A FTER M R . J ERVIS LEFT , I went back to the kitchen. I had only been gone from the room four minutes, maybe, but even though it was my house, where I’d lived four years almost, and we’d just met Frank yesterday, I had the feeling, coming back in the room, that I was breaking something up. Like a time I walked in my father’s bedroom over at our old house, and Marjorie was sitting on the bed with the baby, and her shirt was open and one of her breasts was showing, and another time when they let school out early because someone did an experiment wrong and the building filled up with sulfur smell, and there was a record playing so loud my mother didn’t hear the door open and slam behind me, and from the kitchen, where I came in, I could see her in the living room, dancing. Not a regular dance with steps, or the kind she was always trying to teach me. That day she was twirling around the room like she was one of those dervishes I saw once on a National Geographic special. That’s how the two of them looked, when I came back in with the peaches. Like they were the only two people in the world.
    They had more than they could use, I said. The Jervises.
    The other part, what Mr. Jervis said about the prison escape, I didn’t mention.
    I set the fruit on the table. Frank was down on his knees on the kitchen floor, fixing a pipe under the sink. My mother sat next to him, holding a wrench. They were looking at each other.
    I picked a peach out of the bucket and washed it. My mother didn’t believe in germs but I did. Germs are something they made up to distract people from what they should really be worried about, she said. Germs are natural. It’s the things people do you have to worry about.
    Good peach, I said.
    Frank and my mother were still sitting there, holding the tools, not moving. Too bad they’re all so ripe, she said. We’ll never get through them all.
    Here’s what’s going to happen, said Frank. His voice, which was always low and deep, suddenly seemed to drop another half octave now, so it was like Johnny Cash was in our kitchen.
    We have a serious issue on our hands,