Delicate Edible Birds by Lauren Groff Read Free Book Online Page B

right, and in the wake of its dissonance he finds that he is completely unable to walk to Park Avenue and quit.
    Late that evening he sits by the pool. He touches the place on his thigh where Aliette’s finger had touched him a week earlier. He does not look up until he hears a throat clearing,then startles and finds himself staring up into Mr. Huber’s face, the fat man’s hand on his daughter’s capped head.
    â€œPapa is going to chaperone us the nights that Rosalind is off,” Aliette says, her eyes bright with merriment. L. tries to smile, then stands, extending his hand for a shake. But her father doesn’t shake his hand, just nods and rolls the cuffs of his pants over his calves. He takes off his shoes and socks and sticks his legs, white and hairy, into the warm water. “Go on,” he says, “don’t let me get in the way of your lesson.” He takes a newspaper from his pocket and watches over the headlines as L. carries Aliette into the shallow end.
    L. is teaching her the frog kick, and she holds on to the gutter as he bends both of her knees and helps them swing out and back. When her father’s attention is fixed on an article, Aliette takes L.’s hand and slides it up and over her small breast. By the time her father has read to the bottom of the page, L. has removed his hand to her neck, and he is trembling.
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    AS ROSALIND SLEEPS UNDER THE PALM the next morning, Aliette tells L. that her father didn’t say one word to her in the cab home. But when they were coming up in the elevator, he asked her if something wasn’t a little funny about L., something a little girlish. And she laughed, and related to her father the gossip about her swim coach’s bosom friends.
    â€œVery subtly, of course,” she says. “I am not supposed to know of those things.”
    She tells L. that later, as she was drinking her last glass ofbuttermilk before bed, she left out his book, open to a poem titled, “And into the Fields the Sweet Boys Go.”
    L. interrupts her, face dark. “That poem is about innocence; my Lord, I’m not—”
    She puts a hand on his mouth. “Let me finish,” she says.
    He shuts his mouth, but his face is set angrily. She continues that she heard her father and Rosalind talking about L. in the morning, and her father called him “that nance.”
    L. is so offended he drops Aliette unceremoniously into the water. She swims, though, and reaches the wall in three strong strokes, her legs dragging behind her.
    She says, grinning, “You didn’t know I was a nixie, did you?”
    â€œNo,” he says, darkly. “I am amazed. And for your information, I am not a—”
    â€œL.,” says Aliette, sighing. “I know. But you are a fool.” Then, very deliberately, she says, “The nances of the world have many uses, my dear coach.”
    When he says nothing, trying to understand, she droops. “I’m tired,” she says. “This lesson is over.” She calls for Rosalind and will not look at L. as the nurse wheels her away.
    Only later does he realize she has read his book. He cannot look at her that evening, he is so flattered and fearful of her opinion.
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    SUNDAY, HIS DAY OFF, L. goes to Little Italy for supper with his family. His mother holds him to her wren’s chest; hisfather touches his new linen suit with admiration. In Rome, Amadeo was a tailor; here he is a hearse driver. He mutters, “Beautiful, beautiful,” and nods at his son, fingering the lapels, checking the seams. L.’s older sister is blind and cannot remark upon the visible change in him.
    But in the trolley home, his stomach filled with saltimbocca, L. thinks of his sister when she touched his face in farewell. “You have met a girl,” she whispered. Lucrezia has never seen her own face, and cannot know its expressions—how, at that moment, her smile was an