Read Online The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg - Free Book Online Page B

She carefully arranged them at one end of the long dining room table. Dressed in a haze of mauve chiffon and ropes of pearls and wearing—despite the heat—a plumed satin toque, she lifted a champagne flute in a toast to the empty Chippendale chair to her right. She then lip-synched the words of the drinking song from La Traviata, which was coming over her sound system. While Mrs. Wilcox patiently focused her camera, Mrs. Zender engaged in a long, hilarious conversation with the empty chair to her right and requested that Mrs. Wilcox keep her camera focused on her, not the empty chair.
    Amedeo watched, fascinated. When they returned to their work, he said, “Mrs. Zender definitely loves having her picture taken.”
    â€œMaybe,” William said. “Or maybe she just likes being center stage.”
    â€œI thought Mrs. Zender’s whole career was center stage.”
    â€œThe newspaper always referred to her as our local diva, but she mostly sang boys and bitches.”
    â€œPardon me,” Amedeo said, “but did you say boys and bitches? ”
    Amedeo had never before heard William Wilcox swear. His grammar sometimes slipped, and he sometimes used the A word, ain’t, but his grammar, his shrugs, his silences were the personality equivalent of Mrs. Zender’s unkempt grounds: There was no need to prove anything to anyone. He never used the S word or the F word. Not even a damn or hell.
    â€œYeah. Boys and bitches. That’s what mezzo-sopranos sing. Aida Lily Tull was a mezzo-soprano. She sang boys and bitches.”
    â€œExcuse me, but did you just say bitches again?”
    â€œI did,” William replied. “Mezzo-sopranos have voices that are lower than regular sopranos, so they are given parts like Carmen in the opera Carmen. She’s a bitch. Or sometimes mezzo-sopranos sing the parts of boys. When girls sing those boys’ parts, they call them breeches roles. Like in one Mozart opera called The Marriage of Figaro, there is a part for a boy called Cherubino, which is always sung by a mezzo-soprano woman dressed up as a boy in Italian, even though Mozart was a Austrian.”
    â€œWhy did Mrs. Zender stop singing?”
    William shrugged. Not a one-shoulder shrug to his angel, but a two-shoulder I-don’t-know kind.
    â€œCome on. You must know. Or should I ask your mother?”
    â€œMa won’t tell you. If she’s got a client, she won’t gossip about that client.”
    â€œIt can’t be that terrible.”
    â€œIt ain’t, but Ma thinks telling is.” William lowered his head and rubbed his forehead. When he looked up, he said, “Ma thinks gossiping about a person gives a part of that person away.”
    Amedeo said, “I think you always give a piece of yourself away when you make a friend.”
    â€œBut it’s yours to give. Mrs. Zender is a client.”
    â€œBut I think she wants to be a friend, too.”
    William had many silences, just as he had many shrugs. Sometimes he entered a silence as if it were another language, and Amedeo would have to wait. This one was a silence from which William emerged slowly. When he did, he said, “The stories in the Vindicator tapered off. Then the stories stopped. The stories stopped altogether until Aida Lily Tull’s daddy died. Aida Lily comes on home to St. Malo for her daddy’s funeral, and there is her picture in the paper. There she is right alongside her glamorous mother, the duchess. And there in the picture Aida Lily Tull is big. She is downright fat. Everyone in St. Malo figures that maybe she’s not so big in the Europe opera scene anymore because she’s got too big for her breeches.”
    â€œYou mean that?” Amedeo asked. “Or you just trying to be funny?”
    William said, “Both,” and bit the inside of his lower lip to hold back his smile.
    â€œSo that was the end of her career altogether?”
    â€œProbably. After