When No One Was Looking Read Online Free Page B

small,” she said when the music was over. “I’m a shrimp, but I’m still going to beat ’em all.”
    “There you go again,” said Oliver, grinning.
    “Who on earth was that?” Kathy’s mother asked after Kathy had jumped into the front seat of the station wagon and wrapped a towel around herself for warmth. “Where’s your sweater? Who was that boy?”
    “I lent him my sweater,” said Kathy. “He was cold.”
    “You lent him your sweater!”
    “It’s my tennis sweater. It looks okay on a boy.”
    “Kathy, that’s a fifty dollar sweater. Who was that funny looking boy?” Mrs. Bardy ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair, a masculine gesture that Kathy had not inherited and did not like. Her mother did this when she was worried or tired. It occurred to Kathy that her mother seemed worried or tired a great deal of the time. She was always pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses in weariness. Her mother had never cared for hairdos or clothes or pretty objects, but recently she seemed to care even less for these things. Her time was divided in three parts: work, family, and Kathy’s tennis. As for the latter Kathy wished she could relieve her mother in some way, but that of course was impossible. Once upon a time her mother had been an athlete too, with a strong, hard body that looked so healthy and young that she didn’t need plucked eyebrows or lovely dresses. Ten years behind the counter at the photo shop had made her pallid and soft, or was it just the contrast with Julia’s beautiful mother that Kathy saw? “His name is Oliver English,” said Kathy, “and he goes to Yale.”
    “He looks like an orphan.”
    “He is an orphan. Well, practically.”
    “What do you mean, practically?” Her mother’s voice was impatient, as she liked everything to be exact.
    “Well, he’s here for the summer, living with an uncle, I think. His father is somewhere up in the deserted part of Canada, and he can’t live with his mother and stepfather because his stepfather hates him, and he hates his stepfather because he gambled away most of his mother’s money at the racetrack and playing cards.”
    “They sound like absolutely awful people. I don’t want you mixed up with people like that, Kathy. Gambling, of all things!”
    “Oliver isn’t awful, Mother. He can’t help his stepfather. He even put tacks under his stepfather’s tires when he was eleven years old. Besides, Mother, these things happen very frequently. Often stepfathers don’t get along with their new wives’ sons. The Chinese say the son bites the toe of the stepfather.”
    “What?” Mrs. Bardy turned and looked at Kathy with something close to horror on her face.
    “Oliver’s major is Oriental languages, Mother. At Yale. At Yale!”
    “Oliver seems to have told you a great deal about himself,” said her mother, meaning something entirely different. Kathy, through the drone of the motor and the singing of the cicadas, could almost hear her mother ask, What did you tell him about us? Did you mention that Grandma is in a nursing home too expensive for us but not expensive enough to be good? Did you say that twenty years ago I did not even come close to making the Olympic swimming team and that I use tea bags twice? Did you tell him Daddy works as a commercial photographer going to other people’s weddings and bar mitzvahs and confirmations, or did you try to make Daddy’s job sound artistic? But of course her mother did not ask any of these questions, which was a shame because, although Kathy felt estranged from her family at various times, she would no more have parted with any of this information than she would have described herself going to the bathroom.
    “Oliver’s sweet, Mother,” said Kathy. “He’s not like regular dumb boys at all. He isn’t all pimply and aggressive. He has no mother and father to take care of him. He doesn’t even have a sweater. He has to eat crummy old hamburgers at the club