Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell Read Free Book Online Page A

Barry.”
    â€œWe play, we have a band, and Sally sings. We bet you do, too. We’re pretty good, it’s cool, Laurie jams with us when he comes up on weekends.”
    â€œI don’t sing,” I said, jaw clenching.
    â€œD’you play?” He had such an open face; no one had wounded him. In this bustling house, he knew only love.
    â€œYou should be in bed.” I knew my tone was cold. I placed a hand on the doorknob, pulled the door open wider.
    â€œIt’s fun. Think about it,” he said, standing, the guitar neckheld easily in his right hand. He loped down the long, book-lined hallway to his room, the one nearest his parents’ domain at the front of the house. Oh, I envied him, with his safe bedroom and his long book-lined hallway and the dragonflies that blinked at his windows while crickets nattered outside—someone had taught him to play, not just guitar but with all of life’s niceties. I shoved the door shut with my hip, felt the definitive click as the knob settled into place, leaving me apart and separate.
    As I got into bed, I felt the bedroom walls press in on me ever so slightly, like the light, loving palms I used to stroke my pregnant belly. God, I envied those children—but at least the house approved of me.

Six
    T EN DAYS LATER , we could still be found at the Hymans’ house. The semester was in full swing and our daily habits had become, in their odd way, ordered and predictable.
    Breakfast. Two shifts. First twelve-year-old Barry and the two professors, soft-boiled eggs and hot cereal, lightly browned toast spread with butter and marmalade. Shirley presided infrequently; it seemed to be a meal that made itself, although all detritus was the responsibility of the ladies left behind after the last door slam. By eight-thirty, the house was awash in a thick, peaceful silence, the only sounds the light pattersteps of Shirley’s cats, the ticking of the hall and kitchen clocks, and the low humming the icebox emitted.
    I stayed in bed as long as I could. It was only September, but there was already a morning chill in the house that lingered until long after the sun began to glimmer at the mottled windowpanes. As I dozed, I would feel the way life purred through the house even in the stillness. With my head snug on a pillow against the wall, the house’s soul breathed with me, and through me, seeping into the baby’s rhythms and my own. I was sleeping better; I felt prepared for the eerie dreams when they came—I felt the house was talkingto me, that it liked me and wanted me to know. And because the house liked me, because the house and Shirley liked me, I felt calm and appreciated, safe as I had never imagined I could be.
    From the bed, I glimpsed the first reddish leaves drifting slowly through the air; the crisp scent of transformation had never before been so intense, so pleasant. Coffee had begun to taste good to me again; when I smelled the fresh pot, I tossed back the quilt and pulled on my robe. Downstairs, Shirley might already be at work, but if not we would sit and talk in morning murmurs, as if the baby inside me were asleep and not to be awakened. It was evident now, a taut panel across my belly, and I found it soothing to run my hands over it. The gesture invited every stranger to recognize my condition, and I liked that; I was less shy on the baby’s behalf already than I was on my own. I liked even more the way it felt to sit with Shirley, in silence, and wait—me for my baby to grow, and she for the abrupt jolt of inspiration that almost always began her workday.
    When it came, whether she was at the dishes or staring out the window, cigarette in hand, or beginning to disjoint a raw chicken, she would matter-of-factly cease the activity—turn off the faucets, push back her chair, drop the knife on the counter—and leave the room. It was as if she were called, each morning, by a voice:
Now, now . . . here