Meet the Austins Read Online Free Page B

black
not because of Uncle Hal but because she is a city person and she looks beautiful in black and wears it a great deal. Her hair is black, too, and in one portrait Uncle Douglas painted of her he used great enormous globs of blue and green in the hair, and, funnily enough, when it was done it was exactly right. We have a lovely portrait of Mother Uncle Douglas painted, and he’s painted quite a few others of her, too, and one is in a museum. Uncle Douglas says he paints only beautiful women. But, he says, beautiful is not pretty. I don’t really know whether Mother is beautiful or not. To me she looks exactly the way a mother should look, but only in the portrait where she’s holding Rob just a few weeks after he was born does Uncle Douglas see her the way I do.
    Aunt Elena doesn’t look like a mother at all—and, of course, she isn’t. Her black hair falls loose to her shoulders and she always looks to us as though she were dressed to go to a party. When she plays with us we always have a wonderful time, but it’s as though we were brand new to her each time, not as though she were used to being around children at all. Uncle Hal, with his big booming laugh and the way he could roughhouse with us all, was quite different. I thought of Uncle Hal and remembered that I would never see him again, and I looked at Aunt Elena, and it was as though it were terribly cold and my sorrow was freezing inside me so that I couldn’t speak.
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    John came in just then, bursting in through the kitchen door with his jacket still on and his face so pink from the cold that the lenses of his glasses began to steam up from the warmth of the kitchen.

    John and I fight a lot, but I have to admit that John is the nicest one of us all. He seems to know what to do and say to people without having to think about it, and whenever there are elections and things John always gets elected president. So now he was able to do what I wanted to do and knew I ought to do and simply couldn’t do. He went right up to Aunt Elena and put his arms around her and hugged her hard and kissed her. He didn’t say anything about Uncle Hal, but it was perfectly obvious exactly what he was saying. For a moment Aunt Elena sort of clung to him, and then, just as I thought maybe she was going to start to cry, John took his arms away and said, “Aunt Elena, you’re the only person around here who can untie knots, and my shoelace is all fouled up. Could you untie it for me?” And he yanked off his shoe and handed it to her.
    Now, I am very good at untying knots and I always untie John’s knots for him and I started to say so, indignantly, but then I realized what John was doing and I shut my mouth, just in time. Aunt Elena bent over John’s shoe, and the tears that had been starting in her eyes went back, and when she handed John the shoe she smiled and looked like herself.
    â€œWhere’s everybody?” John demanded.
    â€œYour mother’s out picking carrots,” Aunt Elena said.
    â€œOh, no, not carrots again.” John groaned. “I wish Rob had never planted those carrots. Where’re the kids?”
    â€œYour Uncle Douglas took them for a walk.”
    â€œWhat’s for dinner—other than carrots? Carrot sticks this time, I hope. We had ’em cooked last night.” He went over to the stove, lifted the lid off a big saucepan, and sniffed. “Um, spaghetti. Garlic bread?”

    â€œBut of course,” Aunt Elena said as Mother came in, her arms full of carrots.
    I was helping Mother scrape the carrots when there came the sounds of shouting and talking and then in they came, seeming like a whole horde of children instead of just three and Uncle Douglas.
    And a dark-haired little girl came dancing in, screaming shrilly, “You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!” and went dancing around the table, Suzy and Rob after her, and, of course, Rochester came