Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace by David Adams Richards Read Free Book Online

and scorching hot in the summertime. It had the appearance of a prefab school for elementary grades, without the advantage of grass or shrubs.
    There was one shrub out back that she had planted, which had been covered with burlap all winter. Below her the road went straight down river, narrow and calved with frost heaves. She could see the nearest light of Loggie’s wharf when she stood upon her tiptoes.
    She still had a swollen eye and some bruises. She had gotten them when she had fallen down the nightof the fight. Ivan had put an ice pack on her eye, had taken off her clothing as he did after all her seizures. When she woke up she ran. She ran about the building four or five times and then went to Ruby’s to spend the night.
    She was pregnant. She did not want to bring another child home to her mother. And now, because of what had happened, she was scared she would have to. She was resolved never to rely upon her mother or anyone else ever again. Like some people who are considered slow, she could be quite stubborn. Her mother was frightened for her. Everything her mother feared had come true – because her mother had always believed the worst about her.
    “This is a terrible time in her life, and she has nowhere to turn. But there will be no child if she doesn’t want it – you just mark my words,” she’d overheard Ruby say to Dr. Savard. And this, somehow, gave her a shivery feeling and made her feel important. “There will be no child if I don’t want it,” she whispered.
    The outrage of others made her feel important. It was impossible not to feel this way, with so many people concerned about her and visiting her, and Ruby saying: “Leave her alone – let her rest for a while.”
    Margaret Garrett had tried to visit, and Gloria had come over. Adele had phoned and said she would be down. A woman’s group had phoned to see if she needed money. There was a talk show on local television about a transition house, and her case, but not her name, was brought up by a woman with close-cropped hair whom she didn’t even know. (This woman happened to be Vera.)
    But the people who rushed in and out of her life at this time, and made her, suddenly, as Antony wouldsay, “The most important show on the road,” had no idea that they partook in humiliating her. In fact, if they had been told this, they would deny it with that tumultuous anger that liberal thinkers often mistake for concern over human rights.
    And yet she felt also that she had finally become important to people she had always looked up to, who had never liked her.
    Even Antony went to see her. He came in one Saturday morning.
    “Well – how are you?” he said.
    “I’m all right,” Cindi said.
    “You don’t look beaten up too bad,” he said. (As if he wanted her to be more beaten up for effect.)
    “No,” she looked at him and then looked at her fingers and wobbled them together. The day was cooling off, and a mute sky lay flat against the water. She had tried to comb out her perm that Ruby had gotten for her, and now her hair was curly in one place and straight in another. Her eyelashes kept blinking.
    “An awful thing,” he said. He sat down on the edge of the couch and took a deep breath.
    Every now and then she would look up at him and blink, and then look down again.
    “Cup of tea?” he said after a long moment.
    Cindi, who had always tried to show everyone that she was useful and could do things like her friends, jumped up and literally ran out to the kitchen to make him tea.
    He drank some tea and looked at her. He looked very closely at her, but he couldn’t see any marks. She sat with her knees pinched together.
    “So,” he said, “you got a hot cross bun in the oven.”
    Cindi smiled, and again folded her hands on her lap. Then she tried to tell a story about what she and Ivan had planned to do, and where they would live. “But then,” she said, in a whisper, “we got in a fight.”
    Antony then told her he remembered that