Falling to Earth by Kate Southwood

Author:Kate Southwood [Southwood, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781609451103
Google: IjxU9gQsFzsC
Amazon: 1609450914
Barnesnoble: 1609450914
Goodreads: 15812219
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

22

Mae takes Ruby onto her lap and rocks her as best she can, sitting there on the davenport. How many times Mae has held a child on her lap, sitting on that end of the davenport, Paul can’t imagine. It’s hard to reconcile his memory of Ruby as a small child with this long-legged creature who is sobbing and gulping, clinging to Mae.

Ruby has turned her face against the front of Mae’s dress, but Paul can still see her mouth, lips pulled back in a howl like a wide smile. Ellis stands beside Paul, taciturn and staring at Ruby. His fists jerk now and then, and Paul suspects that, given an invitation, he’d climb right on top of Ruby to get near Mae. It’s clear that Ellis doesn’t trust himself to talk, doesn’t trust himself not to lose control. Paul lays his hand on the small of the boy’s back and looks across at Little Homer who is watching everything from Lavinia’s lap in one of the wing chairs by the fireplace.

“Ruby, sweetheart,” Mae says, smoothing the girl’s hair. “I couldn’t understand you. Can you tell us again?”

Ruby shakes her head. She has stopped crying but is still shuddering each time she draws breath. Paul shakes out his handkerchief, still in an ironed square, and hands it to her.

“Was it the teachers who said something to you, or one of the children?” he asks.

“Both,” Ellis says, still not looking away from Ruby.

“What was it the teachers said?”

“That nothing happened to us so we should act normal.”

Paul catches Mae’s eyes before she looks down again at Ruby. He asks Ellis, “What did the children say?”

“It was just a couple boys. They followed us part way home, out of their way, and yelled stuff.”

Paul looks up at Ellis standing there next to him and waits.

“How maybe they should show us what it felt like when a school falls on top of you.”

Mae starts to cry at that, lips and eyes squeezed shut tight. The sight of her, blindingly angry and struggling to control herself, is too much for Little Homer, who throws himself off Lavinia’s lap and onto the floor and lies there crying with his face in his hands as if he’d done himself an injury. Lavinia tries to pick him up again but isn’t strong enough, and Homer crawls away from her across the rug to Mae and presses himself under Mae’s arm so that she’s holding him and Ruby, both.

“One of them threw some rocks at Ruby. Just a handful of gravel or something. He missed and I grabbed some gravel where I was standing and jumped out in front of her. I didn’t have to throw it or nothin’. Just show him I meant it.”

Paul takes hold of Ellis’s fist and opens it. Ellis raises his other hand and opens it, palm up, next to the other to show Paul the gravel he has been clutching.

“You want to tell me who these boys were, son?”

Ellis looks back at Paul, unblinking, and says, “No, sir.

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