The Fainting Room by Sarah Pemberton Strong Read Free Book Online Page A

even had time to vacuum or figure out what to serve, or—shit, she hadn’t even cleaned up the broken glass in the study upstairs. The big jagged pieces of windowpane and the smashed lampshade were still all over the rug and the rain had probably come in and wrecked the rug entirely. She should have dealt with that first thing this morning; what was wrong with her?
    Evelyn leaned against the sink and took a deep breath. She could at least bring out some snacks. But what? Her own mother, when she was being fancy, used to set up a card table outside the Winnebago on which she’d serve ladyfingers she had cut in half and filled with Cool Whip, then sprinkled with powdered instant coffee. Right, Evie Lynne, that’ll look real good. She began opening and closing cabinets: brownie mix, corn muffin mix, Bisquick. She’d bought these things herself, but at this moment the boxes seemed malevolent and alien. Just choose something, anything, she thought, and bring it out on Ray’s grandmother’s old tea set. That, at least, would lend an air of class.
     
    Ray came out of the bathroom to find a bedraggled-looking girl in old clothes sitting on the living room sofa and neither Evelyn nor Liz Luce anywhere in sight. The girl stood up when he came in.
    “Ray Shepard,” he said, extending his hand. “Glad you could make it in this weather.”
    “I’m Ingrid.” She ducked her head, as if she were a little shy, but then seemed to recover and shook his hand with more force than he expected from someone her age. Her hand was clammy.
    “Hello, Ingrid. I’m sorry, my wife and Liz are...?” he looked around, as if they might be hiding behind the sofa.
    “Your wife went to get me a towel,” the girl said. “Ms. Luce didn’t come. I rode my bike.”
    “In this rain? She told us she was going to bring you over.”
    “She was—but I came by myself.”
    She did not smile. Ray was reminded of the sober-faced women and children who stared out of 19th century daguerreotypes looking as if they had never cracked a smile in their lives.
    “Well, here, please, have a seat.” Ingrid sat down again where she had just been sitting. Ray cleared his throat and called, “Evelyn?”
    The door to the kitchen swung part way open and Evelyn poked her head out.
    “I’ll join you in a minute,” she said brightly, a brightness like a sharp knife; her smile was tight and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She gave him a little wave before disappearing behind the door again.
    “So Ingrid,” Ray began, in the manner of a man who does not know how to fish bravely casting his line, “Do you enjoy school?”
    As soon as he said it he remembered being asked this very question when he was her age, and knowing that the adults asking were doing so only to be polite; he had resolved to be different.
    “It’s okay,” Ingrid said, in the bored tone the question deserved.
    Ray cleared his throat and tried again. “Liz—Ms. Luce—tells us you’re hoping to spend the summer here in Massachusetts.”
    “She didn’t tell you I got suspended?” Something that might have been a smile flickered at the corners of Ingrid’s mouth and was suppressed.
    “She did, actually. She said you’d been caught drinking beer, but she assured me you aren’t a problem drinker. I should hope not, at your age.”
    “It was one lousy Budweiser. If she only knew what goes on in the woods behind the music building, she wouldn’t have bothered with me.”
    “So the problem is not that you’ve been suspended, but that you cannot return home for the summer because your parents are away.”
    “It’s not a problem for me. I’d rather die, actually, then go back to Melvin.”
    “Melvin’s your father?”
    “Melvin is a horrible sprawl of houses that passes for a town east of Irvine, California.”
    “Ah, yes,” said Ray. “Those awful houses, ‘designed,’ as it were, by builders—houses bearing no relation to the landscape or to one another, save that the walkways