Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore Read Free Book Online

having a better imagination than most people.
    â€œTell me, Courtney, do you ever get depressed?”
    Courtney thought about looking out her window at the ground two stories below it, and thinking what it would be like to fall there. That frightened her, but she liked to do it all the same. Heights had always terrified her, even when she was a little girl in Westchester and had climbed trees like all the other little boys, even though she was terrified when they swayed in the wind and she was very high up. She liked to climb high all the same, although she always thought about falling down. That’s how she felt when she was very depressed, as though she were looking down from a height and thinking what it would be like if she should fall down.
    â€œ Yes,” she said. “I get depressed sometimes.”
    â€œMmm-hmm. For very long, or just for a couple of hours?”
    â€œFor periods of time,” she said thoughtfully. “And then there are times,” she said with pleasure, “when I feel just terrific and as though I can do a whole lot of things better than most people.”
    She stopped herself there, because Mrs. Forrest was listening and she sounded awfully conceited when she said things like that. They were always accusing her of being conceited, because when she felt that she wasn’t such a good person after all, when she felt that she wasn’t even as good as everybody else, she didn’t let anyone know it.
    But the doctor was standing up now, and she knew that the appointment was over. There were a lot of things that she would have liked to say to this man who seemed so interested in what she thought, but she hadn’t had time and she never got around to them. She felt that she hadn’t said anything that would have helped him very much in finding out why she was so tired, but she didn’t know what she could have said anyway.
    â€œI very much enjoyed talking to you, Courtney.”
    â€œThank you,” she murmured automatically. She said thank you as a reflex, answering almost any statement, instead of just uuh or something.
    â€œYou take these iron pills and see if they help you at all. I can’t suggest anything else, except possibly cold weather instead of this lovely spring,” he smiled.
    â€œThank you, Dr. Reismann, and goodbye,” she said and extended her hand. She didn’t so much mind leaving, although his office was very manly and comfortable, because the day outside was lovely and it was a nice walk from town to Scaisbrooke. Even Mrs. Forrest was easier to take on a day like this. It was Saturday and the dinner was foul, but there was no study hall, so she didn’t mind going back after her brief sortie into the world outside. On the walk back she wanted to run, but she stayed with the plump steps of Mrs. Forrest, like a polite Scaisbrooke girl, although it was difficult not to respond to the sun like any other young girl in the springtime.
    â€œOh, Jan, you haven’t any clothes on again,” she said in exasperation when she came into the room.
    Janet stretched and said, “No. I feel terribly sensual, I feel as though I ought to be out making love with somebody. Anybody,” she said thoughtfully, “so long as he wasn’t overweight.”
    Courtney eyed her suspiciously.
    â€œHave you been reading my Christopher Isherwood?”
    â€œIsherwood? Never even heard of him.”
    â€œHe heard of you,” she smiled. “Read it some time. You’d like Sally Bowles.”
    â€œWhat’s she like?”
    â€œOh, she’s out of her head. Really game, but out of her head.”
    â€œLike that Zelda that you were telling me about, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife?”
    â€œYeah,” said Courtney. “Like that Zelda, when she jumped into the fountain near the Plaza because it was a hot night.”
    â€œI’m like that,” Janet said proudly. “Like a Fitzgerald