Desert of the Heart: A Novel by Jane Rule Read Free Book Online Page A

Mr. and Mrs. would look good on our bath towels?”
    “Sure,” Ann said softly. “Sure, why not?”
    “Ann?” Ann turned to look at her friend. “We’d like you and Bill to stand for us.”
    “I’d love to, Silver. You know that. And I’m sure Bill would, too.”
    “The only thing is, it would be nicer if you two were speaking to each other.”
    “Give me a drink. Let’s drink to you and Joe.”
    “But on dry land, love.” Silver stood up and got a huge white bath towel out of the cupboard. She held it up. “Come on.”
    “What will this towel say?” Ann asked, as she stepped out of the pool into Silver’s arms.
    “Goldfish,” Silver said.
    “But I won’t come anymore after you and Joe are married.”
    “No?” Silver asked, amused.
    “No.”
    “You said the same thing when you started going with Bill.”
    “And I didn’t come.”
    “Until you had a fight,” Silver said. “Fierce, noble, little fish. You get caught, don’t you? Then you get away, but you don’t learn. The bait always tempts you. If you were an inch or so longer or if I wasn’t scared of the game warden, I’d keep you.”
    “I don’t want to be kept,” Ann said, not quite sure she was telling the truth because standing there, independent and belligerent, she wanted Silver to take her up like a child, to comfort and love her with the familiar, huge, crude tenderness of her body. But in the morning, which was already gray in the sky outside this room, Ann would not be able to stay. She would struggle to get away, to be born again into that live uncertainty of her single flesh.
    “I know,” Silver said, as she picked Ann up in her arms. “I know all about that. I always catch you at night and let you go in the morning.”
    “I love you.”
    “You love all the world, little fish. You think God made even the desert for you to swim in. But you want to be free.”

3
    E VELYN HALL WOKE EARLY her first morning in Reno, refreshed. She lay for a while, watching the patterned shadows of leaves on the carpet, her mind still moving among the patterned shadows of dreams she could not quite recall. If she got up now while everyone else was still asleep, the morning and the house would be her own for an hour. She could begin in control of the day.
    Dressed in the summer suit she had bought specifically for her first interview with the lawyer, her hat, gloves and purse ready on the bed, Evelyn sat down at the secretary to sort her papers and to write a brief note to George. She found it easy to begin the letter. She described the flight, the drive into town, the house, the people in it, her room, her walk out into the neighborhood. As her thoughts returned to the crest of that short hill, she reached for words to explain, perhaps to explain away, what she had felt. It was fear, she wanted to say, but she did not know of what. Hybrid-faithed of Jungian and Protestant—children of jackass and mare, George had often bitterly called them both—Evelyn had nevertheless felt, at the sight of that Nevada desert, a Catholic desolation. “It was as if I saw, in fact, what I do not believe,” she wrote. And having written it, she looked down at the letter and realized that she was not writing to George at all. It had been years since she had made any attempt to explain her own feelings to him. Puzzled, she set the pages of the letter aside and began again. She wrote one short paragraph and signed her name. It was already after eight o’clock. She would be late to breakfast.
    Though her appointment with the lawyer was not until eleven o’clock, Evelyn walked into town quite soon after breakfast. On the way, she stopped at a gas station to ask for a city map. She was only several blocks south of the river. Walking toward it, she passed the Reno Public Library and was tempted to go in, but she remembered having set it aside for tomorrow. The heat, at nine o’clock in the morning, was already intense, but on a bridge that crossed the Truckee