Rowing in Eden by Elizabeth Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

as she moved her tiny bird-bone fingers in among her wares, setting things to rights. “You might like to see the tiger lilies I got in my car.”
    â€œOh, I love tiger lilies,” Franny said.
    â€œExpensive,” Peg murmured.
    The old woman smiled. “Mrs. Wagner bought three dozen for her lunch ladies. She said they were a good price.”
    â€œThat’s nice for you, isn’t it?” Peg fingered four dimes up the side of the sugar bowl while giving Franny a sideways smile that Franny hoped the older lady did not see.
    â€œTrug” was the precise name for the basket in which the woman carried her flowers to and from her car. When Franny first had come across the word, she had known immediately that it described the basket carried by the flower lady. A perfect word: trug. So humble. Like potato. Like—hummock.
    â€œHonestly!” Peg said as the woman returned to her car. Something in the set of Peg’s chin let Franny know Peg’s feelings were hurt, and, sure enough, as they hurried the little bundles of dripping flowers to the kitchen, Peg said, “Who all could Kay be having for a luncheon? And did you see how that woman was trying to shame me into buying her lilies?”
    With the word “trug” now slipped over her own arm—its size necessitated holding the arm away from her side—Franny smiled at Peg and said, “Well, I didn’t, Mom, but, then, actually, I was thinking about having some of your tuna salad.”
    Just to be nice. She knew the salad would make her breath stink at that afternoon’s piano lesson.
    A plump little quail of a woman, the piano teacher. A chain-smoker worn by recent widowhood. She gazed rather mournfully out a window obscured by ivy while she asked, “So, tell me, truthfully, did you practice at all this week?”
    Franny mumbled frightened inanities about the difficulties of practicing with guests in the house, and how she would do better next week. She tried not to think about the hairy mole on the teacher’s neck. A pathetic thing. Revolting. Like some furry pet cockroach that peeked out over the teacher’s lacy collar.
    With a rap, the teacher brought Franny’s pile of books together on the corner of the piano. A Steinway. Once, Franny’s father had come to fetch her at lessons and had stepped inside and admired the Steinway and played a version of “Mack the Knife” that the teacher seemed to find charming.
    â€œFrances”—the teacher held the books out to the girl—“you need to consider whether you want to continue lessons.”
    Then it was over, and the next student could be heard, opening the screen door to the porch, coming inside. That girl was gawky, with hair the sickly yellow of the unguent Franny’s family used for burns, but she had talent, and dedication, too. Usually, while waiting to be picked up at the lesson—why did her mother always have to be late?—Franny sat in a corner and looked at the teacher’s art books while the talented student played. Today, however, mortification drove Franny onto the screened porch. It had rained while she was inside, and the raindrops had beaded on the porch’s painted concrete floor. She extended the toe of her shoe to push one of the beads, see if it would roll, but it only smeared.
    Her parents would kill her if she quit piano, she thought, and a queer pressure moved down her body, head to toe, as if she were being swallowed.
    What was that?
    Last winter, once, after a basketball game, she had waited for her mother in the foyer of the junior high school while the snow got deeper and deeper and the evening grew darker. All of the other studentshad been picked up and the janitors finally shut her into the foyer with the metal accordion doors that made a second defense against intruders. Friendly, good-hearted men, they did not realize it frightened Franny to be left alone in the dark building.