Dreams Are Not Enough by Jacqueline Briskin Read Free Book Online Page B

you?”
    “That’s up to Dad. He’ll have to apologize to my wife.”
    Clara blinked uncertainly.
    “Barry, it’s okay,” Alicia said.
    “I categorically refuse to enter a house where my wife’s been insulted,” Barry said sternly.
    “You know Dad, dear,” Clara sighed.
    “He means well, but he’s never apologized to anyone in his life.”
    “Then it’s about time he did.”
    “You used to be such a good boy,” Clara said, and tottered away. She had not once permitted her gaze to rest on Alicia.
    Barry shut the door.
    “So they’ll let us have the cottage, the people you work for?” he muttered.
    “Sure,” she said, covering her uncertainty with a smile.
    The Youngs were so shocked when they learned that their maid was married, and to a “white college student” (yes, Mrs. Young actually said it), that neither of them noticed that she had lost her accent.
    When Alicia asked if she could continue on the job and have the cottage for her and Barry, both Youngs put on grave faces, and Mrs.
    Young sank onto the slick plastic that covered the brocade upholstery, her somewhat protuberant eyes fixed on her husband.
    He said obligingly, “Alicia, while Mrs. Young and I discuss this, will you and your husband step outside.”
    Alicia and Barry waited on the front step.
    After a long ten minutes, they were invited back inside. Dr. Young did the talking, extolling the construction and plumbing of the room in back.
    “In a neighborhood like this we could get top rent for it,” he said, neglecting to mention that the local zoning was R-h restricted to single-family dwellings.
    “But Mrs. Young and I are very, very fond of Alicia, and so are Ronnie and Lonnie. And you seem like a sensible sort of young man, not wild or noisy. So we’ll let you have it—on a trial basis, of course.”
    “You won’t regret it,” Barry said diffidently.
    “Naturally we’ll deduct a little from Alicia’s salary. Does fifty dollars strike you as fair, Alicia?”
    Alicia knew that at one twenty-five she was already being underpaid.
    Fifty dollars less? But what choice was there?
     
    She nodded.
    “Fine.”
    “After you’ve done the dinner dishes, you’re absolutely free to go out there,” Dr. Young said.
    “Unless Mrs. Young and I have a date. Then, of course, you’ll baby-sit in the house with the boys. Your husband” -Barry coughed, repeating his name.
    “It’s Barry Cordiner, sir.”
    “Yes, Corder. You understand of course that this arrangement doesn’t include food.”
    Mrs. Young said, “I won’t tolerate Alicia feeding you from my kitchen.”
    Alicia leaned toward Barry, anticipating some of the hot temper he had displayed with his parents. But he nodded docilely.
    “Of course.”
    In parting, Mrs. Young said, “Alicia, we expect you here at six thirty, sharp.”
    They checked into an ancient motel on Pico. A radio blared the music of Argentina on one side, on the other a drunken marital argument rose and fell. When Barry climbed on top of his wife’s luscious body his erection turned to marshmallow.
    The evening had reached its final defeat.
    Neither of them slept much. The next morning they arrived at the Youngs’ well before six thirty.
    Leaving Alicia whipping Birds Eye frozen orange juice to a froth in the Osterizer, Barry went into the small backyard. Alicia’s word, cottage, had roused in him visions of a vine-draped setting for Werther or some such rustic romance, so it took him a full minute to accept that she had meant the room stuck behind the garage.
    Yanking open the unlocked, warped door, he was blasted by the pungent aroma of fertilizer. Dr. Young, a gardening enthusiast, stored his weed killers trowels, clippers and other equipment on the rough redwood shelves, using the floor space for huge plastic sacks of Bandini steer manure. Moving gingerly around the bags, Barry opened a plywood door, gagging involuntarily at a toilet whose interior was a Stygian brown.
    He had to straighten the