After Her by Joyce Maynard Read Free Book Online

activities of the couple at the end of the street. Keeping our scrapbook was, for me, a way of addressing, in a tangible way, an intangible feeling of uneasiness about our neighbors.
    Or maybe it was this: so many questions remained unanswered in our lives at the time. We were looking for hard data to explain the inexplicable. Maybe I hoped that if we assembled enough simple data concerning an individual whose behavior confused us—investigating the contents of his trash can, tracking the times of his departure for work and subsequent arrival home, and whatever else we might record through the viewfinder of my camera—we might come to understand the things that struck us as odd. We were too young then to recognize that the discovery of hard facts seldom yields true enlightenment.
    After a few weeks of working on our scrapbook—and finding no additional data of significance—our interest in documenting the comings and goings of Mr. Armitage tapered off, to the point where one day, finding the scrapbook, I realized that nearly a whole year had gone by since we’d made any entries.
    I put the scrapbook on our shelf. Now, except for his walks with the dog, and his regular morning hike up the mountain, we hardly ever saw our neighbor, and we thought about him even less. Him or his wife.
    Sometime later it occurred to us that months had passed since either my sister or I had laid eyes on Mrs. Armitage, which led to our conclusion that they might be getting a divorce. That was one story we felt no need to investigate further.

 

    Chapter Five
    O nce, when she was seven or eight, Patty was walking home—just wandering around the neighborhood, looking for dogs probably. It was one of those rare afternoons when, for some reason, I wasn’t around. For Patty, spending an afternoon without me was like the sky doing without the sun.
    As she told me later, she noticed a basketball lying on the ground near the playground. It had rolled into some bushes, but she could still make out the faded orange surface and the last few letters of the word Wilson . She walked over to investigate.
    The ball was a little flat, but usable. She picked it up. Checked to see if the ball could still bounce. It did.
    That was the beginning for my sister. I doubt Patty had ever even held a basketball before that day. Now, for the first time, she had, and once she did, she liked the feeling.
    There was a patch of blacktop nearby. At one end was a pole with a hoop attached. No net, and the backboard was a little off-kilter. Patty started dribbling and aimed the ball at the hoop. It didn’t go in on the first try, she told me. But after that, yes. Many times. Later, she dribbled the ball all the way home.
    The next day we went over to Helen and Tubby’s. Tubby had been a school custodian before he retired—meaning he owned every tool known to man, including an air pump and the needle you need for inflating a basketball. Once the ball was filled with air, Patty’s dribbling got even better.
    Later she mastered dribbling behind her back and through her legs. She mastered crossovers and balls-against-the-wall. Other kids noticed and asked her to play with them. On the court my sister was nimble and fearless, and surprisingly aggressive for a girl who, off the court, seldom spoke up or made waves. When she was shoved to the ground, which sometimes happened, she never betrayed any sign that it hurt, though it must have.
    But Patty’s greatest gift with a basketball was her shooting. Right before she made a shot she would freeze dead in her tracks. Just seconds earlier, her body had been tearing up and down the court so fast it was hard to keep track of her; now, about to take a shot, she stood stock-still, spring-loaded. Then she would look up, lock her eyes on the back of the rim, and with a brief glance to the right or left, she would release the ball, keeping her gaze on that rim until the moment the ball swished