The Rope Walk Read Online Free Page B

boys and necessarily think of the boys’ mother, but Alice knew they remembered her when they looked at Alice, perhaps for the likeness between them, both of them red-haired and red-cheeked and mottled on the neck when upset or anxious, or perhaps just because Alice was a girl. Alice sensed that she was regarded as unfortunate by some of the MacCauleys’ friends and neighbors, a girl in a house full of boys, a girl in a house that lacked a mother's touch, a girl ina house that contained neither hair dryer nor drawers of makeup in the bathroom, nor even, thanks to Alice's own perverse preference for pants rather than dresses, more than one summer dress and one winter one, an old-fashioned blue velvet with a white bib of a collar picked out by Elizabeth that made Alice feel like an orphan dressed up to impress prospective parents. People had relegated Alice, she believed, to the shadowy underground of the woebegone and misbegotten, the world of those who had suffered bad luck; those who had attached themselves, even unwittingly, to something sad; those who always reminded people of someone no longer living. In that dark place, misfortune, ugly as a stepsister, would always follow at your heels. You would have to be very brave, Alice thought, to escape. You would have to be heroic.
    Still, despite their mother's early death, they had a talent for happiness, the MacCauley children. That was what people said, admiring them at parties—all of them (except Alice) so tall and boldly colored, the twins like Alice and Beryl with Nordic strawberry-colored hair, the others dark-haired and blue-eyed like Archie, with Archie's handsome features. Surely Alice, too, feeling as she did on this morning of her tenth birthday with the world sparkling beneath her, could hold on to a share of that happiness?
    Downstairs, Wally began banging on the piano:
ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, ta-ra-ra-BOOM-de-ay
, faster and faster. The door in the face of the cuckoo clock in the upstairs hall sprang open, and the little bird sang out the hour. Alice flung her legs outside the window frame, dangling her feet and thumping her heels rhythmically against the clapboard. Beside her, the window curtains inflated with the wind, rising and falling against her. Alice took deep breaths, puffing out her cheeks and exhaling gustily, herbreath filling her up, and up, and up until she was light-headed. She felt as if she might float off the windowsill; the only thing keeping her tied down were her feet, which had grown pleasantly heavy.
    And then she heard the first car crunching down the long gravel drive between the pine trees, approaching the house.
    The party was about to begin.

THREE
    T HE FIRST IN A PROCESSION of cars turned slowly onto the grass of the field. Alice yanked her legs inside and dropped off the windowsill onto the floor. Her ironed party dress was ridiculous; she did not want to be seen in it. Girls her age wore blue jeans, even to parties, but Elizabeth did not think this was suitable party attire, and Archie helplessly deferred all such decisions to Elizabeth.
    After a minute, Alice peeked up over the edge of the window-sill. The first arrivals were picking their way over the rough ground of the field toward the house, calling greetings to Archie, who descended the porch steps and strode out across the lawn to meet them. As Alice watched, nose above the windowsill, Mr. Casey, who owned the Grange Inn in town, sailed down the driveway on his bicycle, his dachshund standing up in the wicker bicycle basket and barking hysterically at Lorenzo, the MacCauleys’ affable black Labrador, who wound joyfully among the guests.
    A balloon slipped free of the porch railing and rose silently into the leafy shadows of the maple tree near Alice's window.
    When Alice heard Archie call her name, she sank back hurriedlyto the floor again. She could imagine him taking a step backward on the lawn to search her window, shielding his eyes with his hand. But she did not want