Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You Read Online Free Page B

her figure. Nobody but Et and Arthur knew what effort that cost her. Nobody but Et knew it all. Both of their parents had been heavy, and Char had inherited the tendency, though Et wasalways as thin as a stick. Char did exercises and drank a glass of warm water before every meal. But sometimes she went on eating binges. Et had known her to eat a dozen cream puffs one after the other, a pound of peanut brittle, or a whole lemon meringue pie. Then pale and horrified she took down Epsom salts, three or four or five times the prescribed amount. For two or three days she would be sick, dehydrated, purging her sins, as Et said. During these periods she could not look at food. Et would have to come and cook Arthur’s supper. Arthur did not know about the pie or the peanut brittle or whatever it was, or about the Epsom salts. He thought she had gained a pound or two and was going through a fanatical phase of dieting. He worried about her.
    â€œWhat is the difference, what does it matter?” he would say to Et. “She would still be beautiful.”
    â€œShe won’t do herself any harm,” said Et, enjoying her food, and glad to see that worry hadn’t put him off his. She always made him good suppers.

    It was the week before the Labor Day weekend. Blaikie had gone to Toronto, for a day or two he said.
    â€œIt’s quiet without him,” said Arthur.
    â€œI never noticed he was such a conversationalist,” Et said.
    â€œI only mean in the way that you get used to somebody.”
    â€œMaybe we ought to get unused to him,” said Et.
    Arthur was unhappy. He was not going back to the school; he had obtained a leave of absence until after Christmas. Nobody believed he would go back then.
    â€œI suppose he has his own plans for the winter,” he said.
    â€œHe may have his own plans for right now. You know I have my customers from the hotel. I have my friends. Ever since I went on that excursion, I hear things.”
    She never knew where she got the inspiration to say what she said, where it came from. She had not planned it at all, yet it came so easily, believably.
    â€œI hear he’s taken up with a well-to-do woman down at the hotel.”
    Arthur was the one to take an interest, not Char.
    â€œA widow?”
    â€œTwice, I believe. The same as he is. And she has the money from both. It’s been suspected for some time and she was talking about it openly. He never said anything, though. He never said anything to you, did he, Char?”
    â€œNo,” said Char.
    â€œI heard this afternoon that now he’s gone, and she’s gone. It wouldn’t be the first time he pulled something like this. Char and I remember.”
    Then Arthur wanted to know what she meant and she told him the story of the lady ventriloquist, remembering even the names of the dolls, though of course she left out all about Char. Char sat through this, even contributing a bit.
    â€œThey might come back but my guess is they’d be embarrassed. He’d be embarrassed. He’d be embarrassed to come here, anyway.”
    â€œWhy?” said Arthur, who had cheered up a little through the ventriloquist story. “We never set down any rule against a man getting married.”
    Char got up and went into the house. After a while they heard the sound of the piano.

    The question often crossed Et’s mind in later years—what did she mean to do about this story when Blaikie got back? For she had no reason to believe he would not come back. The answer was that she had not made any plans at all. She had not planned anything. She supposed she might have wanted to make trouble between him and Char—makeChar pick a fight with him, her suspicions roused even if rumors had not been borne out, make Char read what he might do again in the light of what he had done before. She did not know what she wanted. Only to throw things into confusion, for she believed then that somebody had to, before