Read Online The Swan House by Elizabeth Musser - Free Book Online Page A

Eiffel Tower way off in the distance. See how she did it? And of course she sketched Notre Dame right after that.” He flipped the page, and the famous cathedral appeared.
    â€œOh, just look at the gargoyles leaning over with their wicked expressions,” I said, peering intently at the page. Then I howled in glee. “Jimmy, look! She put your face on one of the gargoyles!” Mama was known for her touches of humor.
    â€œDid not!” Jimmy insisted. Then upon closer inspection, he shrugged. “Who cares?” But I could tell he was thrilled. And then he snorted. “Look at you, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes. You’re the Virgin Mary!” And he was right. “That’s a good one! You the Virgin Mary!”
    â€œI hadn’t even noticed that,” Daddy said, chuckling, but all too soon we were sniffling and brushing our sleeves across our eyes.
    He flipped to the next page, and there was a little girl feeding a pigeon and in the background were lines of people waiting to get into the Louvre.
    Daddy gave a nod, as if he’d just remembered something, and said, “It was the strangest thing, that little girl, oblivious to the crowds, intent on her pigeon. And your mama took off her shoes and sat in the grass in the Jardin des Tuileries and started sketching her, equally oblivious to those staring around her. Sheila was so much like a child sometimes. . . .”
    Jimmy gave me this queer look, and I raised my eyebrows to warn him to be quiet and listen as Daddy reminisced. So Daddy took us to Rome and Florence and Madrid and Vienna and Amsterdam and London and Edinburgh, and every page was filled with the sketches from those great cities.
    Then, quite suddenly, Daddy buried his face in his hands and gave this horrible, deep sigh. I quickly closed the pad. “I’m sorry, Daddy. We don’t have to look at it anymore.”
    â€œYou keep Mama’s sketchpad, Swannee. She’d want it that way,” he said, brushing my forehead with his bristly cheek.
    I took it up to my room and set it beside my own sketchbook, the one I used almost daily, the one Mama had given me. Her sketchpad would be one of my most treasured possessions, and with the inspiration from her European trip tucked safely in its pages, I reaffirmed something that I’d felt from my earliest years: I was going to be a painter too.
    But it turned out that for weeks I didn’t sketch a thing. The June days were muggy and long, and I found myself slipping into a stupor that matched the sticky heat. I typically had a million ideas running around in my head, but now, as hard as I tried, there was nothing there at all. No energy, no interests, no appetite.
    â€œYou’s gonna git too skinny, Mary Swan, if’n you don’t eat nothin’,” Ella Mae chided.
    I shrugged.
    Rachel Abrams’s calls went unanswered. My mare was not ridden. My sketchpad lay closed. The lethargy seemed to swallow me up, and I sat for hours staring out the window of my bedroom into the backyard. I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I just cried for days on end, and I couldn’t eat, and my sleep was fitful.
    And I couldn’t get away from the articles and the reporters and the citywide grief.
    Mrs. Alexander, my English teacher, stopped by my house one afternoon. At Wellington she was prim and proper and demanding, a straight-backed woman in her midforties. But standing there in the entrance hall, she took me in her arms and held me tight. “Mary Swan, I am so sorry.”
    Squashed against her bosom, I felt a stab of guilt. How many times had I made fun of her in class by sticking her name into some famous poem at just the right place?
    â€œWould you like to sit down?” I offered. “And what about some lemonade?”
    â€œNo, no. I won’t be long.” She followed me into the living room, and we sat across from each other on the matching love seats. “Mary Swan, as you know I