The Barclay Family Theatre by Jack Hodgins

Author:Jack Hodgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ronsdale Press
Published: 2012-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Wainamoinen sat. He felt, suddenly, that his bones could easily have been two hundred years old. Carl Roote and Gladdy and Kit O’Donnell looked at him as if they expected him to shatter, fall apart, disintegrate.

You offered what you had to give and they did one of two things every time: didn’t recognize what it was or rejected it without even looking.

“When you moved into my house I’m afraid I thought of you as my children,” he said. To Gladdy. You couldn’t expect Carl to look up. “I’d just lost my son and then you came along. I would’ve done anything. I told Sylvi she’d have to watch me, I might do anything I was such a fool. Just watch, I told her, they’ll be up to complain about that tree, they’ll be hollering they can’t see the view just the same as Robert did, can’t see anything but all those trunks. And I was willing, it didn’t matter to me, we see right over the top. I would’ve chopped it down if you asked.”

Carl looked up. His face glistened with sweat. “All we wanted was a place to live.”

“Of course,” Wainamoinen said. “And that is the point. I’m always trying to give people more than they want. It is a fault of many old men.”

“I wouldn’t’ve called it a fault exactly,” Gladdy said.

“Oh but it is. When it intrudes. When it disappoints.”

“We all disappoint,” said the girl, and looked at the floor. “No one knows that better than a teacher.”

“And have our faults,” Gladdy said.

Though from the look on Carl’s face you wouldn’t think he was ready to agree.

“Still,” Wainamoinen said. “There is more in that painting. If you had only looked at it. I’ve given you . . . given you, what you want, what you said.”

But there was nothing in those faces to show they were listening. Or cared.

Then Gladdy Roote brought her hand up to her throat. “Look!” she said, and pointed out the window. “David Payne. He’s coming out of that place, out of that funeral place.”

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