Western Wind Read Online Free Page B

Gran. “The girl, Deirdre, would never put on such a dress. She was wearing torn blue jeans when she posed for me. My little joke. The boy is Aaron. He’s a strange child. His ears aren’t actually like the ones I painted. It’s that he listens so intently you feel he’s all ears. His parents are awfully nervous about him. Helen watches him all the time. Usually, he spends the summer with her brother, but the brother had a stroke this spring. So Aaron’s here for the first time.”
    â€œWhat makes them so nervous?”
    â€œI don’t know. Aaron can’t get lost on this island, and the water temperature doesn’t encourage impulsive swimming. But it’s true he doesn’t seem to understand danger. He climbed up on their roof last week. They had a frightening time getting him down in one piece.”
    â€œFunny, to wear such a lot of pearls with a bathing suit,” commented Elizabeth.
    â€œHelen always wears them. Years ago, her first husband ran away from her. I heard from people in Camden who’ve known her for years that she never got over feeling disgraced. It’s said that when she found the note he left, she put on the pearls and has never taken them off, even in the hospital when the children were born. The family is really like a small country. Maybe all proper families are. I feel I need a passport to visit them. Occasionally, I think they’re going to revoke my visa. If I wasn’t their only neighbor, I do believe they’d have nothing to do with me. Helen is very disdainful. When I take a walk in the early evening and pass their house, I sometimes hear her laughing, and I know she’s making fun of someone, probably me.”
    â€œThey don’t sound so great.”
    â€œI like them, though. Maybe like isn’t quite the word.”
    â€œMaybe you’re interested in them,” said Elizabeth, with a slight emphasis, recalling how Gran had asked her if she had to like everything.
    â€œAh! That must be it,” Gran said with amusement. She was rolling up newspaper sheets and thrusting them into the wood stove. As Gran added kindling, Elizabeth picked up the Polaroid camera and looked through its viewfinder at the room. There was a yellow glow at the west-facing windows.
    â€œTake a look at those birds out on the sand spit,” Gran suggested. “Every afternoon, even when it’s foggy, they come to sit there and look toward the sunset. Some kind of bird religion.”
    The fire caught, and soon Gran had filled a large, dented pot with water from the pump and placed it on one of the stove lids, around which Elizabeth saw a red rim like a corona. After that, she washed lettuce leaves, one by one.
    â€œYou don’t mind bottled dressing, do you? I’m too old for vinaigrette. I’ll light the lamps now.”
    Soon the room was awash in a pale yellow glow from several kerosene lamps. Now the posts were like trees that had grown inside the cottage.
    A vivid memory came to Elizabeth. She was sitting at the kitchen table at home while Mom sorted clothes that had dried in the sun that afternoon. Elizabeth was crayoning. She recalled the feel of the thick, waxy crayons, the rough surface of the drawing paper in front of her, the radio on low, playing piano music, evening coming softly across the fields like smoke. She had felt so safe.
    She put the camera back on the plank table. “It’s very quiet here,” she said.
    â€œI have a small battery radio I get the weather on. You can play it, if you like.”
    Gran, busy at the stove, didn’t see her shake her head no. Elizabeth drifted toward the staircase to look at some snapshots tacked to the wall there.
    Surprised, she said, “These pictures are all of the cottage.”
    â€œWhen I visit painter friends of mine,” Gran said, “and I see their big, well-lit studios, I get envious. Then, when I come back here in July, everything looks