Mothers and Daughters by Evan Hunter

Author:Evan Hunter [Hunter, Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK THREE

Julia

The car Julia Regan bought in 1952 was an Alfa Romeo roadster.

Its appearance on the streets and roads of Talmadge, Connecticut caused no little comment. The town, indeed the nation, had not yet succumbed to the exotic siren call of the foreign car. They had been fascinated by the miniature charm of some of the foreign imports, had indulged their caprice to the extent of purchasing automobiles that seemed both novel and economical, but the indulgence had not yet become a trend, the fascination had not yet become a craze. The car Julia purchased startled the citizens of the town because it was the first such to appear in Talmadge and because it appeared in a burst of low-slung black elegance with red leather upholstery and white-wall tires and a Pinin Farina front end seemingly composed of peering head lamps and a smirking radiator grille. Julia Regan was forty-eight years old, and something Puritan in the lifeblood of the townsfolk rebelled at the concept of her driving such a flashy automobile.

At the same time, they were forced to admit that Julia’s beauty had miraculously withstood the ravages of time, and that she managed to bring an added grace to the clean, wide-canopied, prancing good looks of the automobile. Oh yes, she had thickened a bit about the waist, and her throat and neck were not as taut as they once had been, and the brown hair braided into a bun at the back of her head showed strands of gray here and there. But somehow, Julia was managing to avoid the anonymous abyss of middle age. They would have said she was aging gracefully if there were any question of her aging at all; but Julia seemed to have found a constant level somewhere between maturity and old age, and she clung to that unchangingly, effortlessly. There would, they knew, be no in-between years for Julia Regan, no subtle evolution from summer to autumn to winter. They would continue to see her for a long time as youthful, energetic, beautiful. And then one day they would raise their eyes and look at Julia, and she would be old. Suddenly, she would be old. In the meantime, they watched her with a sort of shocked awe, deploring the jazzy sports car but simultaneously respecting and rejoicing in the freedom of spirit that had led to its purchase.

At forty-eight, Julia still moved with graceful femininity. Her voice had deepened a bit, and she spoke rarely and softly, her large brown eyes emphasizing her every word. Her body was neither the ripe ornamental accident of a maiden nor the meticulously structured shell of a matron, but it was a womanly body that resisted every middle-age tendency toward squareness. There was an iron-hard quality to Julia, a stiffness of back, a purposefulness of stride, a thrust of head and chin, which did not invite casual relationships and which provided her with an aura of aloofness. But this was the core of the woman, and not the mold.

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