Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates Read Free Book Online

unsettled by the girl’s appearance: clothes crushed and hair awry, eyes dazed and mouth swollen, with the lipstick eaten away. Love was often said to be torment, but Rachel could make it seem like punishment as well.
    Another thing: Gloria had come to suspect that Evan wasn’t entirely to be trusted—wasn’t, perhaps, to be trusted at all. There was a little too much of the devil in that handsome face. Sometimes, as when he narrowed his sparkling eyes to give you a sidelong glance, he looked like the kind of boy who might seduce and abandon a girl without a moment’s remorse.
    “Rachel, I think we ought to have a talk,” Gloria said one afternoon in the living room, where Rachel had set up the ironing board to press the pleats of a sexy-looking white skirt she planned to wear that night. “I don’t think Evan’s being very considerate of you in this long, aimless courtship. If you’re engaged there ought to be a wedding date, and it ought to be soon.”
    “Oh, mother.” And Rachel looked up impatiently in the steam of the electric iron. “Can’t you see how unfair that would be to Evan? He has a career to think about. He’s going to be an engineer, as I’ve told you and told you, and he’s going to need—”
    “All right, but how long does engineering school take?”
    “Well, it’s four years, but the point is—”
    “You want to be engaged for four
years?
”
    “
No!
Will you please let me finish, mother? The point is, a great many college students
are
married. We may be able to get married after Evan’s first or second year, because by then I’ll probably’ve been working long enough to build up our savings. I’ll have a steady job, you see.”
    “I don’t like the sound of this,” Gloria said decisively. “When Evan comes over tonight I think the three of us had better sit down, right here, and discuss it.”
    So that was what they did. The young couple sat listening together on the old sofa, holding hands, while Gloria spoke plainly. She pointed out that long engagements had always been considered unwise, for obvious reasons, and she urged them to be married not later than November. Otherwise, she said, it would be only sensible for them to “release one another from any promises.”
    When she’d delivered that speech she felt acquitted of her responsibility. She had taken the right line and chosen the right words. Meeting unexpected challenges as they arose, absorbing the jolt of each surprise and then making quick, firm decisions—this was the kind of activity she had come to think of, over the years, as living by her wits.
    The young people sat conferring together in murmurs; then Rachel turned back to her mother and said they’d think it over, while Evan appeared to be preoccupied with a loose thread on his coatsleeve.
    “Mrs. Drake?” said a deep masculine voice on the phone, a very few days later. “This is Charles Shepard.” He happened to be in town this afternoon, he said, and he wondered if she might be able to meet him somewhere for a drink.
    At the mirror she tried on three different dresses, none of them quite clean, and two ways of fixing her hair before deciding she was ready. She felt as thrilled as a girl, because it had been years since she’d gone out into the city alone to meet a man, and so she had to caution herself not to be ridiculous. She knew perfectly well Charles Shepard had called her only because he’d heard about her ultimatum; now he would want to present an opposing view. Well, she would hear him out, and then she would try to win him over. This would be still another occasion for needing to have her wits about her.
    The place he’d specified was the high, wide, quietly throbbing lounge of the Pennsylvania Hotel, and it was in keeping with the style of this uncommonly congenial man to have chosen such a tasteful setting. He didn’t seem to see her until she was within a few feet of his table; then he blinked, looked apologetic, rose to his full