Peachtree Road by Anne Rivers Siddons Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
dim…Suddenly it seemed to me that, until these four maniacally unknown people had walked in out of the warm April night to light my foyer into rawness and vitality, my whole life had been dim.
I saw next that my aunt held a cherubic little blond boy of less than a year in the crook of one arm, and by the other hand held an equally angelic little girl of, perhaps, three, solemn and sweating and overdressed in a fuchsia velvet coat, bonnet and leggings. Behind her, with one hand on the small girl’s shoulder, a girl taller than I, but obviously younger, stood, staring directly at me with her mother’s extraordinary blue eyes, and something looking out of them flew into and through my own and straight into my heart with a directness and force that felt as though I had swallowed a fire-tipped arrow. I blinked and gulped soundlessly, like a fish drowning in air, and then, surprising myself profoundly, grinned.
PEACHTREE ROAD / 37
The girl grinned back. Her hair was the pure, clear dark of cold winter creek water over fallen leaves, and it flew loosely around her narrow head like corn silk. Her lashes were sooty cobwebs on her pink-flushed cheeks, and she was tall and willowy like her mother, with long limbs and small hands and feet and a whippet waist. She was standing still, but she looked as if she had been in motion all over and had just settled to earth. She wore corduroy overalls and dirty saddle shoes.
Of all the people assembled in the hall, she was the first to speak.
“Something stinks,” she said in a voice that was slow and rich, like music, like dark honey.
“Lucy!” my aunt Willa said, scandalized. She had a flat, nasal drawl. My parents looked at each other, and then at the girl.
“Sure does,” I said back, joy caroling inexplicably in my veins. “It’s Martha in the kitchen. She’s cooking lamb for our dinner. Ugh!”
“Smells like she’s cooking dog,” Lucy Bondurant said, and laughed, a dark silk banner of a laugh, and I laughed, and even when the adults had made us both apologize, and sent us upstairs to the screened porch to “calm down until you can act like a lady and a gentleman,” we continued to laugh.
It was the first real laughter I could remember in the house on Peachtree Road. It was the first, last and longest thing I had and kept of Lucy: her laugh.
When we had stopped laughing, she said, “Are you all the children there are?”
“Yes,” I said, somehow ashamed of it.
“I guess she must not have liked it when your daddy got on her then,” Lucy said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean?” My skin actually prickled with the portent of something coming.
“Well, my mama used to laugh and holler when 38 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Daddy got on her, and there’s three of us. There’s just one of you, so I guess your mama didn’t like it and quit doing it, or there’d be more of you.”
“She didn’t quit,” I said. It was suddenly very important to tell Lucy about the nights in the little dressing room when my mother wept. Shame fled and indignation flooded in.
“He gets on her all the time, but she doesn’t laugh. She cries.
She cries almost every night. I know because I sleep right in their room.”
She looked at me in blue puzzlement.
“What for?” she said. “Why don’t you have a room of your own, as rich as y’all are?”
“Rich?” I said, stupidly.
“Sure. Why do you think we came all the way down here?
Now we’re gon’ be rich, too.”
It was too much, too much of suddenness and strangeness and revelation, too much of promise. My stomach heaved and flopped, and I ran for the bathroom and was sick, and Martha put me straight to bed, so that whatever else transpired that evening, I missed it, and I was still queasy and spinning when my mother came up to telephone her friends and tell them about the invasion of the infidels. It was a long time, late, before I slept.
But I did sleep, finally; slept that night in a different country, one
I saw next that my aunt held a cherubic little blond boy of less than a year in the crook of one arm, and by the other hand held an equally angelic little girl of, perhaps, three, solemn and sweating and overdressed in a fuchsia velvet coat, bonnet and leggings. Behind her, with one hand on the small girl’s shoulder, a girl taller than I, but obviously younger, stood, staring directly at me with her mother’s extraordinary blue eyes, and something looking out of them flew into and through my own and straight into my heart with a directness and force that felt as though I had swallowed a fire-tipped arrow. I blinked and gulped soundlessly, like a fish drowning in air, and then, surprising myself profoundly, grinned.
PEACHTREE ROAD / 37
The girl grinned back. Her hair was the pure, clear dark of cold winter creek water over fallen leaves, and it flew loosely around her narrow head like corn silk. Her lashes were sooty cobwebs on her pink-flushed cheeks, and she was tall and willowy like her mother, with long limbs and small hands and feet and a whippet waist. She was standing still, but she looked as if she had been in motion all over and had just settled to earth. She wore corduroy overalls and dirty saddle shoes.
Of all the people assembled in the hall, she was the first to speak.
“Something stinks,” she said in a voice that was slow and rich, like music, like dark honey.
“Lucy!” my aunt Willa said, scandalized. She had a flat, nasal drawl. My parents looked at each other, and then at the girl.
“Sure does,” I said back, joy caroling inexplicably in my veins. “It’s Martha in the kitchen. She’s cooking lamb for our dinner. Ugh!”
“Smells like she’s cooking dog,” Lucy Bondurant said, and laughed, a dark silk banner of a laugh, and I laughed, and even when the adults had made us both apologize, and sent us upstairs to the screened porch to “calm down until you can act like a lady and a gentleman,” we continued to laugh.
It was the first real laughter I could remember in the house on Peachtree Road. It was the first, last and longest thing I had and kept of Lucy: her laugh.
When we had stopped laughing, she said, “Are you all the children there are?”
“Yes,” I said, somehow ashamed of it.
“I guess she must not have liked it when your daddy got on her then,” Lucy said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean?” My skin actually prickled with the portent of something coming.
“Well, my mama used to laugh and holler when 38 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Daddy got on her, and there’s three of us. There’s just one of you, so I guess your mama didn’t like it and quit doing it, or there’d be more of you.”
“She didn’t quit,” I said. It was suddenly very important to tell Lucy about the nights in the little dressing room when my mother wept. Shame fled and indignation flooded in.
“He gets on her all the time, but she doesn’t laugh. She cries.
She cries almost every night. I know because I sleep right in their room.”
She looked at me in blue puzzlement.
“What for?” she said. “Why don’t you have a room of your own, as rich as y’all are?”
“Rich?” I said, stupidly.
“Sure. Why do you think we came all the way down here?
Now we’re gon’ be rich, too.”
It was too much, too much of suddenness and strangeness and revelation, too much of promise. My stomach heaved and flopped, and I ran for the bathroom and was sick, and Martha put me straight to bed, so that whatever else transpired that evening, I missed it, and I was still queasy and spinning when my mother came up to telephone her friends and tell them about the invasion of the infidels. It was a long time, late, before I slept.
But I did sleep, finally; slept that night in a different country, one