A Place Apart by Paula Fox

Author:Paula Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

One evening during the first week of school, I was sitting on my bed, staring at the books I’d gotten that day for the new term. The history book was used. I could tell it had gone through a lot of hands. There were mustaches drawn on every person in every picture, even on people who already had mustaches—even on the bowsprit of a nineteenth-century sailing ship. I picked up a thin volume of French short stories. It opened stiffly and smelled of new paper. I happened to glance up then at a poster Ma had had framed for me that hung on the wall over my bed. It was a reproduction of a painting called The Peaceable Kingdom. On the glass that covered it was a reflection of my room: the orange glow of my lamp, a shadowy face that was my face. I sat absolutely still, gazing at that other girl. If it was my room, and I was that girl, I thought, I’d be happy. I looked at my real room and at my real hands holding the little French book of tales, which was opened to a drawing of a windmill. Moulin, I whispered, and it was as though a spell had been broken.

I felt slightly dizzy and very puzzled. I looked up at the poster again. All I could see was a blurred reflection, and when I tried, in my imagination, to bring back the room and the girl I had seen, it was like grasping a wave in the sea. I heard the phone ring. Ma came to my door.

“Your friend is calling,” she said. “Not Elizabeth,” she added. She needn’t have. I knew from her voice that it was Hugh.

He spoke to me quickly. It was like listening to a telegram. No jokes, no stories. The school newspaper would publish the first scene of my play, he said. I must come to the first meeting of the Drama Club, because the play would be discussed by its members. He had already met with two members, and there would be a good deal to talk about. His voice was as smooth and cold as the touch of marble. Make ten copies of the play, he ordered, nine for the Drama Club and one for the newspaper. The public library had a copying machine, he said.

“You sound like a telegram,” I said.

“What!” he said, and the word was like a shot.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

And then he hung up.

I dropped the phone back on its cradle without looking, and it missed and fell to the floor, along with pencils and address book and a scratch pad. Everything lay there in a tangle, the phone buzzing like a June bug when you turn it on its back.

“Tory?” Ma questioned.

I picked up everything and put it back. “There’s just too much on the table,” I said. “Why do we always pile up everything on little tables?” I went to the window and stared out at the street.

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