A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler

Author:Anne Tyler [Tyler, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-78832-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

So he slept on the porch, on the heavy, flattened cushions in the wooden swing. Not just one night, but all week. Evie would lie awake until midnight or so, when she heard through her open window the rusty sound of boots on the floorboards and then the creaking of the swing as he settled himself. The creaking died away immediately, with nothing following. He seemed not even to turn in his sleep. He would be one of those people who lay down without a fuss and lost consciousness until morning, frustrating whoever was with them, the way Violet did when she spent the night. It was Evie who stayed awake. She listened to crickets and breaths of music and other people’s parties, and she thought of a hundred different things that could happen if her father came upon Drum. Would he shout? Call the police? Or only apologize for disturbing Drum’s sleep and tiptoe back to bed? She expected to have nightmares about it, but when she finally slept her dreams were of struggling in water as thick as gelatin, running from a fire on boneless legs, climbing a ladder which swooped backwards under her weight but never quite fell over. When she awoke in the mornings, Drum was always gone.

After the first night she came out on the porch in her bathrobe and stared at the swing, whose cushions were not even dented. She was still there when Clotelia came. “He gone?” Clotelia asked. No one had told her Drum was staying there, but she seemed to know anyway. Evie nodded.

“Well, go on get dressed. Nothing attractive about sitting out here in your bathrobe.”

At ten o’clock, her father went off for an errand. As soon as his car was out of sight Drum opened the front screen door a few inches and slid into the hallway. “I wonder if I could have breakfast?” he said. Evie was at the foot of the stairs, sorting out the mail. It was the first time all morning that Drum had not been in the center of her mind, and she raised her head and stared at him a minute. Then Clotelia called, “Come on out, it’s on the table.” She had set a place, even—a dinner plate heaped with ham and biscuits, which Evie and her father never ate. When Drum walked in, Clotelia looked up from the sink to say, “It’s waiting on you, over there. I know you.” Then she emptied the dishwater and walked out, peeling off pink rubber gloves. Drum shrugged and sat down.

“She is a mite uppity,” he said.

“Did you sleep all right?”

“Sure. It’s little short, but better than the ground. You got any syrup?”

Evie handed it to him and then sat down. “Have you been to see David yet?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“How about your friends?”

“How about them?”

“Well, you do have some.”

“Sure.”

“Are they worried about you?”

He frowned at her over a biscuit. “What you getting at?” he asked.

“I’m not getting at anything.”

“You want me to clear out?”

“No, of course not.

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.