A Map of the World Read Online Free Page A

you?” She bent her knees and set Lizzy down, and one by one unloaded the things onto the table. Lizzy had had the good fortune to inherit her mother’s eyes and skin, and her father’s long legs. She toddled off into the living room.
    “Hi, Liz,” I called, but she was already on her way.
    “I’ve got to run because I’m meeting Mom in town for coffee. You will not believe this,” she said, coming to me and grabbing my forearm. “We’ve heard that Uncle Emmett is going to introduce his secret illegitimate daughter at the family picnic. You know about her—my God, we’ve all known about her for years, but we’ve never admitted it. I think it’s a blessing, that he’s going to be able to get it off his chest, but my poor mother is so traumatized—she ate an entire Sara Lee cheesecake last night.”
    “No!” I said, moving away, brushing my hand over the scratch marks Emma had made at breakfast.
    “Did you hurt yourself?” Theresa asked, peering through my fingers at my wound.
    “No, no,” I said, “I spoiled Emma’s world irrevocably first thing this morning by pouring milk into her cereal bowl, instead of letting her do it herself. I thought for a minute a cobra had bitten her foot off, but it was only a mistake I was in the process of making.”
    Theresa wrinkled her brow, not quite sure how the marks on my arm related to the cereal bowl, and then she laughed, saying, “I know, I know.”
    No, I wanted to say. You don’t know. Audrey and Lizzy are never as bad as Emma.
    “I’ll tell you everything later,” she said, going out and closing the screen door. She went a few steps into the yard and then she turned around and called into the house, “Bye, Audrey. Bye, Lizzy.”
    “MOM,” Emma shouted from the bathroom. “I need you in here.”
    I went directly to her aid only to find her sitting on the toilet studying a catalogue. “Emma,” I said, “could you please ask me in a calmer way? I’m afraid I don’t have much patience this morning, and I don’t want to spend this nice time acting like an old witch. Please ask me in a calm way, and I’d be happy to help you.”
    I leaned back against the wall wondering how she was ever going to be civilized enough to go to kindergarten.
    “Could you please help me, Mom?” she asked. “Is Audrey here?”
    “Yes,” I said, as I adjusted the criscrossing bathing suit straps, something she could have done herself. “Lizzy and Audrey are both in the living room, and in a little while, if we can all achieve some kind of radiant serenity, or at least get you out of the bathroom in one piece, we’ll go swimming. Now, go behave yourself, please , while I finish clearing the table.”
    This was my plan: I would walk down the lane. The simplest thing in the world. The girls would run ahead, until they got to the edge of the pond, just about to fling themselves in the four-inch shallows, and then they’d stop short, test the water, say how cold it was. They’d play with their buckets and shovels and boats in a sand pile, and wade up to their thighs watching the minnows swim around their feet. I was going to get myself wet and then stretch out with my chin on my hands. I was going tolie exposed, heedless of the dangerous sun. The girls would find endless amusement with four pails of water and seven acres of water and pretty soon the morning would be over.
    First I put the milk away and then I climbed down the basement ladder to get some homemade butter from the freezer. When I’d gotten the plastic tub I could still hear the girls playing in the living room so I went straight upstairs to get my swimming suit. I thought I had thrown it over the chair in the bedroom, but I didn’t see it. We hadn’t swum in a day or two and I wasn’t sure where I had left it last. I walked to the storage room to look out to the clothesline. In Theresa’s house this would never happen. Their refrigerator was the size of a barn and was equipped on the outside with