Absence of Grace by Ann Warner Read Free Book Online

into the house. Feeling uncomfortable, Clen walked back to the motel. There she pulled out her sketchbook and began to draw the girl from memory.
     
    Slowly the picture expanded. The side of the shack with its ramshackle porch, the rows of washing—not just tiny garments, but larger shirts as well—the girl’s slender arms raised to unpin the wash, the basket at her feet.
     
    When she lifted her pencil from the page, she was surprised to discover it was nearly midnight. Even better, she was sleepy.
     

    In towns too small to have motels, Clen discovered that asking about a night’s lodging at a gas station or diner always yielded information about someone who had a room they were willing to rent. In a tiny hamlet in Tennessee, that room was in the house of an elderly woman named Mag.
     
    When Clen asked Mag for suggestions of where to eat, her hostess chuckled. “Not much of that sort of thing hereabouts. But if you won’t turn your nose up at home cooking, I’d be happy to fix us both something.”
     
    “I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
     
    “It’s no trouble. Kind of nice to have someone to feed. Not much fun cooking for just myself. You can help if you like.”
     
    With Mag directing, Clen chased down a chicken and Mag chopped off its head. Grimacing and trying not to sneeze, Clen plucked it, then Mag showed her how to cut it up. By that point, Clen wasn’t altogether certain she’d be able to eat the thing, but she didn’t share the thought with the old woman.
     
    Mag hauled out an ancient electric frying pan and plunked a cube of butter, a cube of margarine, and a large dollop of shortening into it. She set the heat on low and, while the grease warmed, she dredged the chicken pieces in flour. After she added them to the gently bubbling grease, a delicious smell began to fill the air.
     
    “Now, we let it cook nice and slow while we sit,” Mag said, pouring two glasses of iced tea and leading the way to a small front porch shaded by white clematis. As she rocked, Mag began to talk. Clen listened, alternately sipping tea and sketching.
     
    “Started out in Pennsylvania, my family did. Granddad was a farmer but my father was a shopkeeper. After he married my mother, they moved west, looking for better opportunities, I suppose. I was their second child. My mother always had a preference for my older sister, Helen. Real pretty, Helen was. Blonde curls, blue eyes. Delicate looking.”
     
    Although Mag was short and dumpy with eyes a pale washed-out blue, Clen found her so appealing, it was hard to believe the mother preferred the beautiful sister.
     
    “One Christmas we both got dolls,” Mag continued. “I’d been wanting a doll for as long as I could remember. And oh my, how I loved that doll. I named her Annie, and I took her everywhere I went. Helen mostly ignored her doll. Didn’t even give her a name, and one day she left it out in the yard. The neighbor’s dog got hold of it. And my, that old dog did go to town. Shook that doll something fierce. When Helen discovered it, she went crying to our mother and Mother made me give Annie to Helen. Helen never even played with her but she wouldn’t let me touch Annie.
     
    “Never forgot that. Funny how something that happens when you’re six can stick with you your whole life.” Mag stopped talking and Clen’s hand moved quickly, trying to transfer to the page what she was seeing in Mag’s face—an ancient sorrow that was still causing pain even though it happened more than eighty years ago.
     
    Mag shook herself and stood abruptly. “Time I checked on that chicken.”
     
    “You need help?”
     
    “No. No need for you to get up.”
     
    After a minute Mag returned. “How’s that picture coming along?”
     
    “Good. If you keep telling me stories, I’ll finish in no time.”
     
    “Where was I?”
     
    Clen was too angry with Mag’s mother to answer.
     
    “Well, let’s see. Suppose I tell you about the cooking. I