A Week in the Life of Cassandra Aberline by Glenda Guest

Author:Glenda Guest
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2017-12-29T00:00:00+00:00

Thinking about that whispered conversation brings Cassie to the Blanchard house itself—such a different place from the old building at Home Ground. It was new, and its high-ceilinged rooms were cooled by wide verandahs and ceiling fans. It was, in her father’s words, as clean as a whistle.

The kitchen was a miracle of modern life. The stove here needed no wood and was a white monster that dominated the room. Cassie had watched in astonishment the first time she saw Mary cook with no fire in the stove, and Mary told her it was powered by the generator in the shed, just as the lights in the house were.

We have lights, the child had said. We have lights too.

A sense of wonder stayed with Cassie—at the way they lived in that house and in that family, where she felt no undercurrents of tension, but only great ease between Hec and Mary, and their laughing joy in their twin sons.

Family is everything to the pragmatic Greeks, Mary said. Everything in the world.

And to this Australian too, Hec added.

Me too, Cassie asked—am I your family?

Yes, of course, kouklaki—Mary took her hands and danced with her. You’re my nearly-daughter.

Cassie was three years old the first time she slept in the room opening onto the verandah, and from then on considered the Blanchard homestead and everything in it hers, including the twins.

Dion and Coe are exactly the same age as Helen, Mary Blanchard told Cassie that first time she stayed at Omorfi Thea. I was in the hospital the same time as your mother, and we both had our babies on January twenty-fifth.

The idea of age was foreign to the three-year-old, and when she looked at Helen, Dion and Coe she thought the twins must be older, because they were so much bigger, and louder. But she knew the age thing didn’t matter, that nothing mattered except them together: Dion, Coe and Cassie, and Helen when she wanted to be there.

Cassie saw, even then, that Helen did not know which twin was Coe and which was Dion. She saw, too, that their father didn’t know, and that Coe often took the blame for something Dion had done. If Mary intervened, Hec just said they were both tearaways and deserved all they got.

One day, Mary asked Cassie how she knew which twin was which.

I’ve watched you, Mary said, and you always seem to call them by their right names.

I just know, Cassie said. They looked the same, laughed the same way, had the same voices, even the same smell. Still, Cassie knew.

Shall we play a game? Mary sat Cassie on a stool on the verandah and stood Coe and Dion next to each other in front of her. Which is Coe? Mary asked.

Cassie pointed. There, she said.

Mary led Cassie into the bathroom and shut the door. When she called Cassie to come out, there was one twin next to the hall doorway and one on the verandah steps. Where is Coe? Mary asked. Cassie laughed, ran to the steps, and hugged Coe until he shrugged her off in embarrassment.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.