Random Winds by Belva Plain Read Free Book Online Page B

listening to the Quartet from
Rigoletto
coming over the radio.
    “I remember,” Martin said, “the first time I knew that music could make you laugh or cry. So many different kinds! The organ in church, all waves and thunder, or the band in the town square that makes your feet dance. And once at Reverend Dexter’s, I heard four men playing violins. I remember wishing I could hear music like that again.”
    “My mother played the piano,” Mary said. “We used to get out of bed and sit at the top of the stairs to listen. The house was different, then.”
    “You really want to get away, don’t you?” he asked gently.
    “I think I do, Martin. And then I think: It’s home, I’d miss it. I’m confused … What I really want, with all my heart, is to paint! To put everything down that I feel in my heart, in here! The meaning of life!”
    How young! he thought, with tenderness.
    “I think, if one can do that, one will never be lonely. But then, you would first have to experience life, wouldn’t you, before you could paint it?”
    How young, he thought again.
    Grape summer, dusky blue. Rose-red summer, deep in clover!
    “I hope you don’t have any ideas about that girt,” Pa said at supper one night “You’ve been spending a lot of time over there.”
    “Enoch!” Ma cried.
    “No, no, Jean. Martin knows I don’t interfere. It’s only a cautionary word or two, which he can take or leave. They’re not our kind, Martin.”
    “What kind are we, Pa?” Martin spoke mildly, yet there was a tension in him, not of anger or resentment, but apprehension over being told something he might not want to hear.
    “Why, it’s self-evident,” Pa answered promptly. “Can you see that girl washing dishes in this kitchen? The worlds don’t mix.”
    Worlds. Are we then destined to stay in the one world for which we were made, like pegs in holes or keys in locks? The design cut and not to be altered? Yet, look about you, it is often so.
    “I wonder how long the Meigs will go on living like that,” his father said. “They say the plant’s gradually going downhill.”
    Martin was surprised. “Websterware? The backbone of the town?”
    “I’ve some patients who work there, and they tell me the business has been running on its own momentum for years. Meig isn’t the man his father and grandfather were, you know. He’s in over his head and too proud to acknowledge it.”
    His sister Alice remarked, “Rena works in the office at Webster’s. She says people all know Mr. Meig keeps Fern shut away here until he finds the right marriage for her. Disgusting, isn’t it? As if a woman were a prize racehorse to be mated with a prize stallion.”
    “Alice!” the mother cried.
    Alice tittered. Ever since she had been “going with” Fred Partridge, she had become bolder, almost smug in her new security. Soon she would enjoy the status of a married woman. Fred, who taught gym at the consolidated school, was a decent fellow, as neutral as his own eyes and hair, and totally incurious about everything. Once Alice had had yearnings. She had been serious and enthusiastic. Now her enthusiasm was visibly draining away. She was “settling” for Fred Partridge.
    Martin felt sadness for his sister, as for all eager, young and shining lives, all women who were not Mary Fern.
    His mother was saying, “I hear the crippled one is smart. Is that so, Martin?”
    “Her name is Jessie,” he corrected stiffly. “Yes, she is.”
    “And is the other one really so good-looking?”
    Alice cried, “I can’t imagine who told you that, Ma. She’s thin and much too dark, and—”
    Martin stood up, murmuring something, and fled.
    *  *  *
    In the motionless air the candles made stiff tips of yellow light. Moths struck with a fleshy thump on the screens. Conversation, on this last night before Martin’s departure for the city and internship, moved around the table between Jessie, Donald Meig and an aunt and uncle from New York. Only Mary