A Brief Lunacy Read Online Free Page B

us?”
    â€œHere, Jess. Have some tea.” He pours steaming tea into my breakfast cup. “I just thought they might have heard something. Charlie’s her brother, after all.”
    â€œShould we go to Bangor? Should we go searching?”
    â€œWhere? Where would we start?”
    â€œAnywhere. The police. Churches. Hospitals.”
    â€œThey’re looking for her. Did you get your yarn? Youcould start another sock.”
    â€œDid Rita call again?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œBut you’ve been on the phone.”
    â€œHow about Scrabble? It’d pass the time.”
    â€œWould you drive up the lane to the highway? Just see if she’s trying to come to us. It’s a long walk down here. What if she fell?”
    â€œI do hear something now,” he says.
    â€œWho would be knocking? Who?” There has been no car sound. And we’re over a mile from the road.

4
J ESSIE
    W HILE MY FINGERS are still wrapped around the doorknob, the knock happens again. Sometimes she knocks. Isn’t that odd that a child would knock at her own home? Which Sylvie will it be, elf of the woodlands or queen of the venomous mouth? Although I know there is no God, I pray for the sweet creature who kisses me too hard.
    Hans stands just outside the door on the stoop, his ridiculous walking stick held upright, his bare knees bowed out. Who would wear shorts this late in the season?
    â€œCome in, Hans,” I say. Carl can’t stand him. “Would you like coffee?”
    â€œI’m off caffeine,” he says. “I’ll take hot water. Everything all right here?”
    He strides into the house toward Carl, tapping the infernal stick on our shiny floor with every step. He makes an exaggerated swerve around the piled-up tubes and paintings leftin a heap by the cabinet. Why did I invite him in? I don’t know. Why can’t I say,
It isn’t a good time, dear friend
? But he isn’t even a dear friend. He stands at the table, waiting to be invited to sit down with Carl. Carl gazes out toward the absent gulls, picks up yesterday’s newspaper, reads the back page again. When I catch his eye he nods my way, pushes out a chair for Hans, and resumes reading. Carl is very rude sometimes but I love him. Why? Because he loves me and he’s kind to most people.
    â€œWell now,” I say. “How is Marte?”
    â€œShe was going to come walking but she fell yesterday and her knee is swollen.”
    â€œOh, that’s too bad.”
    â€œShe goes to Boston tomorrow. Visit with the kids.”
    Carl says nothing at all. One of the gulls lands on a nearby rock and stares through the window.
    â€œShe says to come for cocktails at six.”
    â€œNot today,” I say. “We have some family business going on.”
    â€œMore problems with the daughter?”
    â€œNot
the
daughter.” Carl speaks as if he is lecturing to a class of idiots. “
Our
daughter, and now isn’t a good time to chat. And her name is Sylvie.”
    â€œI know that,” he says.
    â€œWould you like a biscuit?” I ask.
    â€œThank you, yes,” Hans says.
    â€œI’m not sure you have time for a biscuit,” Carl says.
    â€œOh, Carl. Don’t be rude.”
    â€œSorry about invading,” Hans says. “I’ll tell Marte you were asking for her. Another time.”
    I see him to the door. I wish Carl hadn’t told him about Sylvie. I would have left it at
Just family business.
It’s really no one else’s concern. Hans paid no attention to Sylvie when she was young, but he stopped in a few summers ago when Sylvie was visiting and they took a liking to each other.
    I stand in the open doorway waving as Hans walks along the path that leads past the old pine tree and continues toward his house, which is several miles down the shore. He has nothing else to do but walk. And what if Sylvie is there, by the tree? Perhaps it was Hans that I heard in