Cold Spring Harbor by Richard Yates Read Free Book Online Page B

money in this place; still, it couldn’t be helped.
    “… Well, I’ve told you how the woman talks, dear,” he explained to Grace. “There isn’t any way to stop her. But I did accomplish the main thing: I got her to agree with us. There won’t be any more pressure on Evan now, and that’s a mercy, don’t you think?… Right … Well, of course, dear, and I’m sorry … Well, certainly. There’s a can of tuna fish on the bottom shelf of the right-hand cabinet over the sink; then if you’d like to warm up some of the cream of mushroom soup we had last night you’ll find that in the refrigerator, in the small pan, and you’ll find some crackers in the left-hand cabinet, up over the stove …”
    As Gloria watched him coming slowly back toward the table she thought she had never seen a man more—well, more presentable. Cold Spring Harbor was well known as a region of “old money”—large or modest family fortunes husbanded through the generations—and the people there couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate representative than Charles Shepard. You could tell his vision was poor from the careful way he walked, but that seemed only to enhance his dignity. He certainly didn’t look as though he might go blundering into things like a blind man; he looked like the kind of man who might still, somehow, turn out to be the hero in the story of her life.
    “Oh, I wish you’d tell me more about Cold Spring Harbor,Charles,” she said when he was seated across from her again. “Because do you know what I’d like to do someday? I’d really like to go out there and stay as long as I can, and discover it all for myself.”
    “Yes,” he said. “Well, it’s a very quiet area; really rather dull, in many ways …”
    When Gloria got back to the apartment that night all her senses thrummed and sang with the pleasure of the evening. But she’d scarcely had time to fix herself a drink for bed when Rachel and Evan came in, hours earlier than usual, and the first thing she saw in their two sober faces was that Rachel looked triumphant. They had something to tell her.
    “We’ve decided you’re right,” Rachel announced, holding fast to Evan’s hand as they sat facing her again. “We’re not going to wait any longer. We want to get married right away.”
    “Well, this is really—this is really very strange,” Gloria said, “because I had dinner with Evan’s father tonight, you see, at the Pennsylvania, and we came to agree on the other plan. The less definite plan.”
    “Oh,” Rachel said. “Well, but then it isn’t you and Evan’s father who want to get married, is it. It’s me and—it’s Evan and me, isn’t it.”
    Gloria didn’t know what to think. She supposed it was good to see this kind of spirit in a child who had always seemed entirely too soft for the world; still, there was something unsatisfactory here that wouldn’t quite come into focus.
    And it was troubling too that Evan hadn’t yet said a word. He had nodded and rumbled as though in agreement while Rachel presented their case; he had allowed his hand to be squeezed by one and then both of hers; but why didn’t hespeak up? Wasn’t it supposed to be the man who did the talking on occasions like this?
    “Well, Evan,” she said, “I’m afraid your father’s not going to think this is a good idea at all.”
    “Oh, well, I wouldn’t worry about it, Mrs. Drake,” he assured her in a sleepy voice. “He’ll come around.”
    This young man might have seemed disturbingly devilish for months, but tonight, in contrast to Rachel’s bright, proud face, he looked bland. He looked like a boy worn to fatigue and ready to give in, ready to submit to the stubborn terms of a girl holding out for marriage. Well, okay, what the hell, his weary eyes seemed to say; why not?
    And only after making those assumptions about Evan was Gloria able to identify the unsatisfactory thing she had sensed in all this. Wouldn’t it be a pity,