Eggs by Spinelli Jerry

Author:Spinelli, Jerry [Spinelli, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: 9780316006651
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2007-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

23

David just could not make himself do it. He put down his brush. “Primrose, are you sure?”

She looked down from the roof. “If you ask me that one more time.”

“But it feels so weird.”

“You’re going to look weird with a white face in about two seconds.”

“But who ever heard of a bedroom without windows? You have to have at least one.”

“Why? So the egg throwers can look in at me?”

“So you can look out.”

“There’s nothing to look out at. Paint.”

It had been hard enough to paint the side windows. But the last remaining window? The most important window of all?

Primrose thumped across the roof on her knees and with an angry swat left a three-foot track of Buten’s white primer across the front windshield. “There go your excuses,” she growled. “Now finish it.”

Reluctantly, David took up his brush and, standing on a chair, began painting the windshield. The last thing he saw inside before the last brushstroke was the propped-up picture on Primrose’s dresser. He had wanted to ask his father about it, but he would not be home for days, and David did not have the patience to wait. So he had resorted to his grandmother.

First he asked her if she knew that picture frames were sold with people’s pictures already in them. His grandmother, who was snipping the stems of flowers from the backyard, simply stared at him for a moment, shocked — and overjoyed — that he would ask her a question. She quickly recovered and said yes, she knew that. David walked away. If he had to speak to her, at least he would do it in pieces, and if possible at her inconvenience.

Later he caught her as she was talking on the phone. “Why do they do it?” he said.

“Just a second,” she said into the phone, not at all irritably, and cupped her hand over the receiver. “Do what, David?”

“Put pictures in the frames.”

“So they can give the customer an idea how their own picture would look in the frame.”

She was heading out the door for her evening walk when he asked what kind of people they used for those pictures. “Oh, usually models or movie stars,” she said. She waited at the door, her expression saying, I like you talking to me. Please ask me more.

As she watched her favorite TV show that night, he thrust the picture at her. “Know who this is?”

She hesitated, then dared to take it from his hand. She lowered the volume with the remote control. She nodded, smiling. “This is Clark Gable. He was a movie star many years ago.”

He took the picture back. It bugged him that he could not annoy her. “How old is he?”

“Oh, he died some time ago. If he were living, I guess he’d be in his nineties, maybe older.”

“His name’s not Bob?

“Bob?” She stared at the picture. “No, I’m sure it’s Clark Gable. He was known as the ‘King of the Movies.’ ” And not Primrose’s father, David had fully realized in bed that night.

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