The End of the Point Read Online Free

voices coming from her mouth, and (mostly) the pleasure it gave Janie to pretend like this, to pretend with her.
    From her mother, Janie learned, what? The stories in those books. They were nearly all about orphans, from what the child told Bea. An orphan from India, an orphan from Switzerland. One girl slept in a hayloft; another heard screams coming from a locked-up room. They seemed unlikely stories for a child, but Janie spoke of them matter-of-factly and with great interest, so who was Bea to say? From her grandmother’s books, Janie learned the names of plants and flowers: beach peas and heal-all, Plymouth gentian, ladies’-tresses orchid. Janie pointed the plants out to Bea and told her how the apple was a jewel case for the seeds inside and the burrs on her dress were for carrying seeds to a new home, like a tramp stealing a ride from a train. You could make one from your shells, she’d tell Bea when they came across a wildflower, not understanding that Bea didn’t aim for her shellflowers to look real, and burrs were for picking off.
    From her mother, Janie learned to play Charades and Murder in the Dark, to run three-legged races, to spot hermit thrushes, towhees (Mrs. P. said the towhee’s call was “Drink your tea!”; Bea said it was “Brush your teeth!”), and tell the prairie warbler from the Maryland yellowthroat and the great horned from the barred owl by their calls. She learned to think always of one’s friends, for Mrs. P. had a great many friends, and when they came (which was not often, that summer), she flitted like a sparrow gathering seeds. From her mother, Janie learned cheerfulness—from Bea too—and never to mention her father’s wheelchair or the sister who had died. Over the mantels, both here and in New Jersey, hung oil portraits of that sister, a gold-and-blue girl who had died in her sleep just months after Helen was born. Her name (somehow Bea knew) had been Elinor, but no one ever said her name. From her mother and Bea both, Janie learned about keeping one’s word. From her mother, she learned to set aside her old toys for the poor children in Newark and go to the store before Christmas to pick out a doll for a child Santa might forget. From Bea, she learned about Scotland, how beautiful it was. Twenty shades of green, Bea told Janie. Twenty shades of green and little lambs.
    From whom did Janie learn more? Well, look at her sisters, who’d had a series of nurses before Agnes and more of both their parents than Janie ever did. It wasn’t just good behavior that Helen and Dossy were lacking in. There was ferocity to their actions, an unhealthy desire to be seen. They ran naked across the lawn and no one even noticed. They went camping out of doors one night (they couldn’t have been more than seven and nine) and left a note— we ran away to sleep outside dont worry dont you wish you knew where we where, HMP, DCP —and their mother said, Oh, they’ll come in when they’re cold or eaten by bugs. Bea remembered it; she’d been holding Janie, feeding her a bottle, and she’d raised the baby for a burp and thought, Not you.
    In the early days, during the long summers on Ashaunt, what she had mostly done with Janie was walk. She’d tie a bonnet on the girl, settle her in her pram and start down the road, greeting anyone who said hello to her: the Porters’ cousins and second cousins; the stable boy leading the ponies; the dark-haired French governess one family brought along, so pretty she turned heads; the local men come to fish; the farmer hauling salt hay for his fields. A child needed daily fresh air, and after Janie learned to walk, Bea would fasten her to a harness she’d bought at a shop in Orange and take her out. People thought it strange at first (“Good Lord, you’ve put my monkey on a leash!” said Mr. P.), but no one told her not to do it, and a child could dart before a car or horse, and anyway Janie liked the contraption, raising her arms for it, crowing