Old Border Road by Susan Froderberg

Author:Susan Froderberg [FRODERBERG, SUSAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316126854
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2010-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

YOU TALK LIKE you got a bad case of romantic in you, Son had said. You talk like you’re lost, he said.

He got up from the table and walked over to the kitchen sink and poured the rest of his coffee into it. You ought to quit reading so much of the time, he said. That and your daydreaming. All you’re doing is sounding like somebody else you’re not. All you’re sounding is loco.

WHAT ARE YOU doing, Girl, just staring off into space? Rose’s Daddy would say if he walked in and found me in Daughter Pearl’s room, sitting as I am at the edge of the bed. He would turn and have a look about, nodding his head at what might be causing my unease, though how could he know the feeling of being fostered out? He would try to comfort me with what he might see as reasons that could be reasoned away. He would probably comment on the hard shade of the lavender walls, or maybe say the canopied bed was a bit claustery, the curtains and pillows and throws all too many and frilly, enough to make one feel smothered in in her sleep. No wonder, he would say, wondering aloud—though keeping his voice low so as not to insult Ham in any way—saying, how could Daughter Pearl’s choosing so differ from her mother’s refined taste in things? He might say, Our children are really less of our doing than a parent believes, knowing Ham would anyway agree with him in this opinion. Take for example that son of mine, Rose’s Daddy would say, nodding at the picture of Daughter Pearl and Son, framed and placed on the bureau top, each of them holding a purple ribbon up for their given livestock winnings. Just a couple of kids they were then, with no more than a couple of years between them, he would say. And in those yesteryears yet somewhat innocent. Or maybe not. Who can say, when we try to hold to our long agos, and with our memory confounding so our hope for things? Yet together those two have grown equally and are much the same, meaning—and I say but the truth—with so little generosity of spirit, with so little integrity, neither one of them believing in a single important thing.

Rose’s Daddy would take his hat off and run a hand over his forehead to the back of his neck—that hand, patchy and withered as the skin on a river toad is.

We turn in the silence that comes over us, regarding the room more completely. We study the clutter of childhood strewn about: the stuffed creatures that are bunched on the bed, as though stayed to watch over those who would be lost in their sleeping; the ribboned winnings at animal husbandry pinned along the sashes and the rods and the beams; the adult-bodied dolls stiffly posed among the shelves in miniature mode-of-the-day clothes. We pause at the loud posters of pop song characters that rob the lavender walls, sweaty-torso’d and feral-hair’d, their mouths opened to shout.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.