Everlasting Read Online Free Page A

waved her hand, as if swiping at a fly. “Not now. Later. Go away.” She covered her eyes with a trembling hand.
    Catherine turned and left the room. She climbed the stairs back to the nursery. Her parents would leave for their apartment in the city today, but Miss Smith and the three Eliot children would remain here one more night, before going on up to Vermont to a lodge for a ski trip … one of their parents’ Christmas presents to them and yet another way of keeping their children away.
    Catherine walked up and down the long hallway, peering into the rooms. Shelly and George had already gone outside. Miss Smith was playing a heated game of Sorry with Ann on Ann’s bedroom floor. Catherine went into her room and sank down on her bed.
    If only Leslie were here. If only she were Leslie. She envied her friend because Leslie had what Catherine didn’t—Leslie had talent. Leslie wanted to be an important painter, and that mattered to her more than anything else in the world. Even better, the art teachers assured Leslie that she had talent as well. Leslie knew exactly what she wanted to do when she graduated: she was going to study at a famous art school in Paris. She would live in a garret on the Left Bank, where she would paint and have lots of artistic love affairs.
    Catherine had tried painting, but although she had some skill, she had no real aptitude for it. She had tried piano and flute lessons and for a while, when she was younger, had dreamed of being a prima ballerina, until her ballet teacher sympathetically pointed out that no matter how strenuously Catherine dieted, she would always have a bust that was, well, inappropriate for a dancer. She was no good at sports, because they bored her.
    Over and over again during chapel, the girls were reminded of their good fortune in life, their exceptional good fortune at being Miss Brill’s girls, at the quality of their education, and at the duty this imposed on them to hold the standard high when they went out into the world. But no one had anything specific to suggest to Catherine. When she asked them what she should do with her life, the teachers and counselors grew impatient: why, she could do anything , she didn’t have to earn a living, she was well educated, she could go where her fancy took her. “Try volunteer work,” was as specific as they got, but Catherine had the example of her mother, that famous volunteer, before her, and she knew that was not the choice for her.
    “Bored people are boring people,” Mrs. Plaice, the counselor, often said, and if so, then God knew Catherine was boring. Now she twisted on her bed, healthy, well fed, energetic, lost. She didn’t want to go skiing with her siblings and Miss Smith, and she didn’t want to go to college, but what did she want to do?
    Restless, angry with herself, she rose, straightened her clothes, and went back downstairs. The guests were up and around now in the dining room, laughing at the long mahogany table, having coffee and a late breakfast. Now and then a car would start up with a roar and someone would leave, rolling down the long white-pebble driveway until it disappeared around a bend of evergreens.
    No one was in the library now, but someone had made a fire that glowed and flared, warming the room. Catherine pulled her favorite old leather photograph albums from the shelf and curled up on a leather chair. The present faded as she lost herself in pictures of the past. Here was her grandfather, Andrew Matson Eliot, in a full-length beaver coat, top hat, and red mittens, waving at the camera from a group of friends, looking as if he were having more fun than any man had a right to have. He was wickedly handsome. Catherine had heard stories about him. She knew he’d been a cad and was probably responsible at least in part for her grandmother’s retreat from all others. Still, he always looked so exuberant. Catherine smiled every time she saw his face. She wished he’d lived long enough for