Two Shades of Morning Read Online Free Page A

too hard (Sibyl didn’t serve iced tea like everybody else)—I would think that now, having corrected him, she might get on with being civil. But halfway through the meal, I decided they must have been arguing before we came and wished we’d waited a while longer before butting in.
    Always pale, Robert Dale’s face turned blotchy-red, a marbled effect. Sometimes he would snap back at Sibyl, or gesture proudly—yes, proudly!—for us to ignore the little woman. So strange: he kept smiling and acting amused with her, amused with himself for having her. And yet he was weary, slightly haggard, no good at the game. I felt myself wearing down with him. My shoulders ached. But, to my surprise, P.W. was having a good time. He was charming and silly-witty, maybe because he figured the evening was almost gone. If we didn’t leave soon he would fizzle like a recording when the power goes off.
    When he didn’t fizzle, I felt like slapping that silly grin off his face. But I was relieved too because his silliness got us through one hour of winding spaghetti on forks, coddled with spoons, at Sibyl’s insistence that it was the Italian way to eat “pasta.” Robert Dale’s new blue shirt looked like worms had tracked it with blood. Before dessert, she ushered him off to change into another new shirt—the creases, evidence that it was new, besides he told us.
    “You shouldn’t tell stuff like that,” she whispered aside in honeyed bleeps. “People’ll think you’re bragging.”
    “I ain’t bragging,” he laughed, “just telling the truth. I’ve never had no two new shirts at the same time.”
    I’d had enough of him too. “What kind of cake is this?” I asked Sibyl.
    “Italian cream,” she said.
    “It’s real good.”
    “Thank you. I made it myself; Mae would’ve ruined it if I’d let her bake it.”
    The cake was absolutely the tallest I’d ever seen without toppling. Ten layers at least, a white column with chopped pecans sprinkled on cream cheese icing. I wondered how she’d got the nuts to stick on the sides.
    “You got to get this recipe, sugar,” P.W. said, bent over his plate for another fork full.
    “Okay,” I said.
    “I don’t give out my recipes.” Sibyl posed with her fork in midair.
    P.W. wasn’t undone. “I don’t blame you. This one’s too good to just give out; you could made a bundle selling it.”
    “I wouldn’t sell it either,” she said. “I just make it for special occasions.”
    She kept eating, candle light reflecting off her square bisque face. The collar tips of her white shirt looked like tiny dove wings on her neck.
    Cake-incident still fresh as the icing in my mouth, I watched her switch from smiling to near smirking, as she’d done on the stair landing yesterday. She leaned close to Robert Dale and whispered in his ear. His eyes cut from her to me, on the other side of the table. “Remember what you told me...you know?” she hissed. “Can I bring it up now?” He smiled while she whispered, listening with merry dark eyes, first shrugging, then shaking his head.
    “Oh, well,” she said, sitting back again. Her tawny fingers shimmed on the table, as though in a secret pact with her two selves.
    The term “changing subjects” took on new meaning for me—I’d never seen anyone so thoroughly change subjects, never been in a situation so changeable. I’d thought I was immune after yesterday.
    Sibyl acted as if she’d just come into the room and sat down. “Have you found your Easter dress yet?” To me—she was talking to me now.
    “I haven’t even looked,” I said.
    “Well, you better get busy. Easter’s two weeks away.
    “I’m thinking about not getting a new Easter dress this year.” I wished I hadn’t said it before the words had leaked from my lips. I always bought a new Easter dress; everybody in Little Town did. Now, I knew I couldn’t buy one. I felt robbed.
    “Well, I saw this sweet little lavender cotton at Sears the other day,” she