Cloud Nine Read Online Free Page B

stone fireplace facing the arch from the hall, and its a bit on the dark side, as the drapes are dark red brocade.
    I pulled up around 11:15, parked, and looked for Burl’s car. I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t prove anything, and I admit I was pretty nervous, wondering what I would say if I had to face him. But Mother opened the door, when I was halfway up the walk. She took me in her arms and kissed me, then kissed me again, which for her was the equivalent of a crack-up for somebody else.
    She’s in her late forties, but looks more like the thirties. She’s quite a dish, a bit on the sexy side. She’s a bit above medium height, but not what you’d call tall, and though not fat has plenty of shape, especially through the chest. Her hair is dark, with just a streak of gray, her skin pale with an ivory tint. Her face is a little heavy though nicely molded. Her eyes are brown, and not warm, or cold, or anything. They’re poker-player’s eyes, except that at times, as now, they can be very soft.
    “Gramie!” she moaned. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Oh, thank God you’ve come!”
    Actually, she said “Gawd,” in the Virginia way she had, as originally she came from Berryville, being of the Burwell family there, who are proud, perhaps a little too proud, of their relationship to one of Jefferson’s secretaries. She was brought to Maryland when young, but sometimes the Old Dominion bleeds through in the way she talks, as when she says cyard for card, and gyarden for garden, or gyowden as I call it, when I’m having fun with her. But we weren’t having fun now, and I just held her close, whispering, “I came the first moment I could, the very first moment I could.”
    She unwound herself from my arms, took my hand, and led me into the living room, where she sat me down on the sofa, the big one facing the fireplace, and then camped herself down beside me. I went on: “I’d have been here an hour ago, except that I had to see Lang—”
    “He’s a perfectly horrible man!”
    “He’s the father of a girl in trouble.”
    “My heart bleeds for her. Did he let you see her?”
    “She came to see me, this morning.”
    “Oh, then you’ve talked with her?”
    I gave it to her quick, what Sonya had told me, at least the highlights of it, then told of my offer to Lang, and the brush he had given it. I asked: “Mother, what does he think he’s up to? At my offer, he practically spit in my eye, and then said pointblank he’d take nobody’s money but Burl’s. But Burl doesn’t have any money! That stands to reason, and yet Lang says he has, and that he knows he knows. What’s it about, do you know?”
    “Not really, but I’m terrified.”
    “Have you given Burl money?”
    “Only his allowance, this fifty a week we’ve kicked in with, you and I together, since he got out of the Army. He could have money, though.”
    “But how? Where would he get it?”
    “Gramie, it all goes back to that girl?”
    “Little Sonya, you mean?”
    “No! The teacher, the one that got killed.”
    “Oh. I didn’t know her.”
    “A nitwit, but insane about him, about Burl. I think he got sick of her. I think she was messing him up with his—weakness. You know what it is?”
    “Women, I would say.”
    “Yes. Gramie, I haven’t plagued you with it, I haven’t said anything—partly from not wanting to weep on your shoulder, partly from hating to talk about it, it’s so ugly. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like, having him in the house, especially since he got out of the Army. Well, one of the angles has been, I can’t keep a servant. Three times it happened, once with a colored girl, twice with white women, and Gramie, the last white woman I got was older than I am. I got her from the agency, and on account of her age thought my problem was solved. He took her while she was fixing dinner—and seemed extra excited by her because she was old.
    “Gramie, I’ve tried to inform myself about men