Time Is Noon by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page B

parents’ troubles.”
    She stared at her mother. “I didn’t know you had any troubles,” she said in a low voice.
    “I didn’t mean you should,” her mother replied. “I wouldn’t now, only I’m in pain—and yesterday morning when I went into your room, Joan, it came over me that you aren’t a child anymore. You’re a woman grown, so tall as you are, and I can’t keep trouble from you any longer.”
    Joan could not answer. This was not her mother, this woman sitting slackly in an old warped chair, the smile gone from her face as though she had never smiled. She felt afraid of her.
    “I’ll do anything I can, of course,” she said uncertainly. Had she been in the garden in the sunshine ten minutes ago?
    “I have something wrong with me,” her mother said vaguely. “I haven’t been right since Francis was born.” She paused, embarrassed, and went on with difficulty. “He was such a big baby and I was torn somehow.” She did not look at Joan, but turned her head and stared out of the window. About her hung shyness. She could not quite forget that this tall young woman had also been born of her. A slight repulsion wavered between them. Joan, filled with anxiety, felt a thread of disgust in the anxiety and instantly would not feel it. If this were only a strange woman she would have poured out quick sympathy. It was easy to be kind to strangers. But this woman was also her mother. She felt entangled in something she did not understand, entangled in a bodily repulsive way with her father, with her mother, even with Rose and with Francis. They were all bodily entangled together. She hated it and rose restlessly from the bed. She wanted to be happy all the time.
    “Have you seen the doctor?” she asked. She went to the other window away from her mother and looked out. She should not have asked the question so coldly. Why was she cold to her mother now? She was afraid of something. She did not want her mother to come close like this. She wanted her mother as she had always been, cheerful and sure and surrounding them with warm pleasantness.
    “Yes, I’ve seen Dr. Crabbe,” her mother answered unwillingly.
    “Dr. Crabbe!” Joan repeated. “He’s nothing but an old country doctor.”
    “He was with me when each of you was born and he knows me,” her mother replied simply.
    Again she felt the throb of rushing repulsion. Her body—once it had been torn from her mother’s flesh, held in old Dr. Crabbe’s rough coarse hands. She knew his hands. She had felt the thick fingers pushing bluntly into her mouth when she was a child, to feel a loose tooth, to hold down her tongue when he looked at her sore throat. She remembered his peering red face coming hugely near, spotted with scars and badly shaved. He opened his mouth while he stared and his teeth were stained with tobacco and he breathed heavily through his hairy nostrils. His eyebrows were like yellow beards, and whiskers an inch long grew out of his ears. He was as short and thick as a topped tree.
    “You ought to see somebody else,” she said, looking steadily out of the window. Now Mrs. Parsons was going down the street. She had been to the post office again and under her arm was a bulky package—a returned manuscript, of course. If this were her mother sitting here as usual in the rocking chair, her hands busy instead of lying loosely like that in her lap, she would cry, “Mrs. Parsons has her novel back again—I wonder which one it is?” and her mother would answer kindly, “Poor soul, don’t laugh at her. It’s been such a curse in that family, her wanting to write novels. I declare I don’t see how Ned and Emily have grown up so good. It’s really poisoned Ed’s life. He told me once he felt he’d never really had a wife or the children a mother. They don’t mean anything to her beside those novels she writes. She measures her whole life by them. If one were accepted I don’t believe she’d ask for heaven. She’s been like