[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Her tennis sneakers barely touched the ground as she walked, and though she was sweating--it had taken her more effort to dispose of young Gary Winslow than she had expected--she wasn't tired and she moved with an undulant allure."That's Willow's mom, right?" Gary said to her as they approached Sara."Yes, indeed.""A shrink?""Therapist," she answered, and as she said the word she wondered what her sister-in-law the therapist would think when she turned around and saw her striding across the grass with this young buck of a teenager.The truth was that Gary was simply going to introduce himself to the woman who was Willow's mom and then change into a swimsuit for his shift at the pool (and, suddenly, she thought of the swimsuit she had with her in her canvas bag and feared that it would seem matronly to this.boy).That was the only reason he was coming this way with her, after all, it wasn't really like the two of them were.together.But Catherine wondered if someone less perceptive than Sara might presume there was something vaguely untoward about her spending time with a strange teenager, the two of them glistening with sweat.Sara looked up from the baby at her side and held her hand flat over her wild eyebrows like a visor.And the woman did indeed have big eyebrows.Sara was attractive, but with her eyebrows in need of attention, her coffee-colored hair the length of a teenager's--hair that was growing now the first telltale filaments of white, a few strands sprinkled in amid the brown just above her ears--and those eyeglasses even more dated than the ones worn by her own brother, John, she looked a tad too earthy for Catherine.Especially today in those sandals with clunky straps and those shorts the color of army fatigues.Catherine remembered when John had first brought Sara to Manhattan to meet their mother and her and Spencer.John had discovered her while skiing in Vermont--within weeks, actually, of her and Spencer's own wedding--and unlike almost everyone else in the lodge that afternoon she was actually from the Green Mountains.Had grown up in a town northeast of Burlington.Her father taught at the University of Vermont, in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and he was one of the country's leading experts on a bug with the appalling-sounding name of the pear thrip.Being an expert on the pear thrip mattered in Vermont, because pear thrips liked to eat maple tree leaves.Sara's mother was the secretary at the village's elementary school, but she had recently retired.In any case, when Sara first saw the courtyard and the columns in Nan Seton's Manhattan apartment building, the cobblestone circle into which the town cars and taxis would travel while awaiting the privileged who lived in the great monolith of a structure, the doormen--there was not a single doorman, not here; there was instead a cadre of wizened old men and enthusiastic young ones scattered throughout the courtyard and standing vigil inside the elevators, some in blue uniforms and some in gray, all of whom had thick, lyric Irish accents--and then the endless sprawl that was the apartment itself, she seemed ill at ease.She had been quiet when she was getting the tour, and when she finally said something more than a monosyllabic murmur of appreciation, she had shaken her head and announced in a voice--playful, yes, but the awe, it was clear, was real, too--"Imagine.And to think I'd thought that everybody in New York City (at least everybody I'd ever meet) lived in those teeny-tiny studios where you slept on a convertible couch by the kitchen." Catherine remembered that her mother had been charming: She laughed and with a self-deprecating shrug explained to John's girlfriend that she and her husband had bought the apartment in the mid-1970s, when Manhattan real estate was worth a little less than property along the Love Canal.Nevertheless, Catherine thought that while there had been wonderment in Sara's reaction, there had also been a slight whiff of disapproval--as if Sara saw something decadent in the plates with the gold leaf in the breakfront or in the notion that although there wasn't a live-in maid, there really were two small bedrooms in the back of the apartment near the kitchen that were referred to as the maids' rooms.Catherine recalled experiencing an unpleasant quiver of guilt, and suddenly the Japanese screens and the Italian floor tile seemed ostentatious.Showy.Dissolute [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]