Dale Loves Sophie to Death by Robb Forman Dew Read Free Book Online Page B

were now wandering around the kitchen, bumping against the table and jostling her pen so that it made unexpected leaps across the page. She had every reason to put away this letter; in fact, she had no choice. These were bright little children with minds as sharp as razors, and she could never remain absorbed in her own sensibilities for long with their energy directed her way. She knew, but hoped that they had not discovered, that in this landscape of her childhood, her parental authority was halfhearted at best. With relief, she arose to fix them food or do whatever they might require.
    “Oh, Lord, you three,” she said with irritation, “how do you always manage it? As soon as I sit down…I was just trying to write a letter. Now what do you want? Let’s see. I thought I would have five minutes of peace.”
    Dinah listened with mild curiosity to her own voice, ineffectual at the moment, and blond as she was herself, fading into the bisque walls, just as imperative to her three dark children as the many buzzings, creakings, and abrupt settlings of this big house. It was only breakfast they wanted, of course.
    “But not eggs, Mama,” Toby said. “I just want plain cereal. I hate that wheat toast.”
    She took a frozen coffee cake out of the freezer and turned on the oven, then she did begin to break eggs into a bowl in order to beat and scramble them; someone would eat them. Toby climbed up the step stool to look into the cupboards to see if there was something to be had immediately, and Sarah tried to follow him.
    “Get down, Toby,” Dinah said. “I’ll give you something in a minute.”
    David was still sleepy and still in his pajamas, although the other two already had on their bathing suits. He sat at the table watching them all with his serious brown glance and the suggestion of a scowl. Inwardly, Dinah quailed at so judgmental a look from this ten-year-old, even though she knew that he was probably doomed to love her unreservedly. She was titillated, somehow, by the presence of her own children in this town where she had grown up. All day, as they came and went in and out of the house while she carried out any number of homely tasks, she might look down at her hands as she cut out a dress pattern and observe the beginnings of the many tiny pleats and wrinkles around her knuckles, the creases along her wrists, and she would feel a sudden pause. It made it inevitable that she absorb the fact of her own adulthood. And so she quailed before them all, considering what lay ahead, considering their potential, considering that perhaps there would be an eventual reversal of dependency. Subtle, she hoped, but probably inevitable.
    She settled the children at the table and served them the coffee cake and the eggs she had scrambled, and then she turned to wash up the bowls and pans at the sink while she took occasional sips of her coffee. When she turned around she saw that Toby had left his place and was not in the kitchen, and that he hadn’t eaten at all or drunk any milk. She started up the back stairs to find him and bring him back. To tell him in a voice like God’s own that if he didn’t eat his eggs and drink his milk he wouldn’t get strong, he wouldn’t stay well. He had to take her at her word that she knew these things. But she found him at the top of the stairs at the landing, folded up on himself, and when he looked up at her she saw that tears were sliding down his face. And sorrow overtook her; he was such a wiry, pathetic bundle huddled there on the floor. She sat down on the step below him and held him in a hug.
    “What’s the matter, Toby?” she asked, but not without a certain wariness.
    And, in fact, he said, “I
hate
eggs, Mama! You know I hate eggs. I didn’t want any, but you gave them to me.”
    It was left to her to decide if this was an accusation—she had served him the eggs—or simply an explanation. “Well, for God’s sake, Toby, don’t eat them, then.”
    He put his head down