Off Season by Anne Rivers Siddons

Author:Anne Rivers Siddons [Siddons, Anne Rivers]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Romance, FIC000000, Adult
ISBN: 9780446505482
Google: dB9RXFZzvukC
Amazon: B0015DTUYI
Barnesnoble: B0015DTUYI
Goodreads: 6994367
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2008-08-13T04:00:00+00:00

The next afternoon when I got home from school, I picked up Jules Verne and went down the hall to my mother’s room, my heart pounding in my throat. I rapped softly on the door. Perhaps she was asleep; perhaps—

“Come in,” she called, in almost her old voice. I went in. She was propped up on a pile of fresh, lacy pillows, in a coral nightgown I had never seen, a matching turban on her head. She was still deathly pale and lines that had never been there before cut her face, but she had put on a little dusting of pink blush, and there was light coral lipstick on her mouth. She wore eye makeup, too. I felt giddy with relief. All right, so she was thin almost to the point of transparency, and there were great yellow bruises on her hands and arms, but she was still my beautiful mother, and still very much alive. A little tray of cookies and a teapot sat on her bedside table. There was a book facedown on the coverlet beside her. I glanced at it: The Tropic of Cancer.

I wanted to laugh aloud. She saw me suppress it.

“Nothing like a little Henry Miller to get the juices going,” she said. “One day you might want to read it, if you’re feeling a little juiceless.”

I said nothing and she looked at me more closely. “Unless, of course, you already have.”

I shrugged and she laughed.

“Come in, darling, and let me get a look at you.” She stared at me until I began to fidget, and then said, “Still a pretty girl. Maybe even prettier. I’m glad to see there are no gills. What have you brought to read to me?”

I held out Jules Verne and she laughed again.

“Why am I not surprised? Well, I’ll enjoy that. It’s been years since I read it.”

I read the chapter that had always fascinated me most; the most seductive evocation of what might be found underneath the sea if one could only get there, the passage where Captain Nemo takes Arronax into the forest of Crespo Island. At first I faltered over the words, but then their power took over and I lost myself in the fecund magic of the undersea forest.

When I had finished, she was silent for a little while, and then looked at me, smiling her strange, oblique kitten’s smile.

“It’s very beautiful, isn’t it? No wonder you want so badly to live under the sea. But you must remember to come back, darling. As an old poet I like, Robert Frost, said, ‘Earth’s the right place for love.’”

Does she know about the suit and the helmet and all? I wondered. No. There’s no way that she could.

“Pass the cookie tray, sweetie, and pour us a cup of tea. Maybe tomorrow we’ll press on.”

We ate the cookies and drank tea by the light of the fading afternoon, until Flora came in to turn on the lamps and I heard the front door slam as my father returned from the university.

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