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.The bouquet he'd brought home the other day had been the first flowers he'd given her since the one-year anniversary of the girls' deaths.She picked up the phone before her voice mail kicked in, and sure enough it was Terry.Off and on over the past week there had been something in his voice that she found troubling, and she heard that something loud and clear now.How's your day going? he asked.Where are you? she asked in return, a reflex, before realizing that she hadn't answered his question.Just south of Shoreham, near the county line.You and Alfred having fun?Yup, we're fine, she said, and instantly she understood why she'd asked a question before responding to his.It was as if she had suddenly stopped trusting him.These days, wasn't she always asking him where he was the moment he called?What's he doing?Right now he's walking a Border collie.A girl named Rascal.Can he handle her?Yup.You need me to bring anything home for dinner? Pick something up in Middlebury, maybe?Dinner's taken care of, she said, and a moment or two later they said good-bye and hung up.When the phone was back in the cradle, she stood for a moment next to her desk.Outside the window she saw the dog leading Alfred back to the shelter, the leash between them as taut as a tightrope.They were walking into the sun, and Alfred was wearing the cap with the cavalry insignia the Heberts had given him.She wondered if there was a way she could ask Terry's brother if something had happened at deer camp.She didn't think there was, but that didn't stop her from pondering the idea.THE THINGS PEOPLE said to her about Alfred only drew her further away from the rest of the world, and closer to the boy--regardless of whether he talked or what he said when he did.You know, Laura, you can hardly tell he's an African-American--he might just be a boy with a very dark tan! So said Abby Rousch that afternoon at the supermarket, when Laura realized that dinner was not completely taken care of, after all, and so she and Alfred had stopped at the grocery store on their way home from the animal shelter.Alfred had been twenty-five or thirty feet further down the aisle, looking at the brightly colored cereal boxes, and so he hadn't heard Abby--her long, pale, elderly finger resting on the side of her age-speckled jaw as she spoke--when she offered Laura the words that she presumed would be comforting.Laura nodded, wondering if she would ever get used to these remarks, and then said, He's a beautiful boy, Abby, and brown is a beautiful color.I wouldn't want him to be anything but what he is.Of course you wouldn't, Abby said, as if she knew something that Laura did not, and she took that long finger of hers with the nail yellowed by age and tapped it gently on Laura's wrist.Laura guessed that people said this sort of thing to her weekly, even people who she thought should know better.People like the boy's teacher, a woman who couldn't have been more than thirty-five.I am completely color-blind, she had said proudly the first day Laura brought Alfred to the school, I treat all my students as if they were white.The fact that the teacher had felt the need to say such a thing--and to phrase it so badly--discouraged Laura.One day some weeks later when she drove Alfred to school, her fears were confirmed.The buses hadn't arrived yet, and so they were alone but for his teacher and a little girl whose name, she believed, was Kathleen.She watched Alfred boot up one of the two classroom computers, and saw he was having trouble finding his folder amidst the icons that appeared on the monitor screen.She realized, however, that she was at a loss as to how to help him.She looked to the teacher, but she was busy tacking posters about the rain forest to a corkboard, and seemed oblivious to the notion that one of her students might need some assistance.Yet a moment later when Kathleen merely glanced with raised eyebrows at the woman--before she had even opened her mouth--almost instantly the teacher put the posters down and was kneeling by the girl's side, explaining to her exactly how to access her folder.Her heart sank when Alfred looked into his lap and then shut down the computer, and she wished she knew how to convey to the woman that the boy--her boy--needed help, too, without making a scene and antagonizing the child's teacher.Even at church they weren't exempt from well-meaning but ill-advised pronouncements.Their first Sunday, one of the deacons bent at the waist and stooped his ancient shoulders so that he was almost Alfred's height, and with one hand on the boy's arm informed him, God loves all children.Black.Yellow.Whatever.It's good to have you here, son.During the moment that Sunday morning when the congregation greeted one another, she noticed that there were people around them who practically fell into her lap trying to shake Alfred's hand and people who did all that they could to avoid the child beside her.Her own parents--no, anyone's parents but hers--might have risen to the occasion and become surrogate grandparents, but they chose instead to remain almost predictably remote.They came north to meet the boy in the first days of autumn and then retreated south.They were going to come again at Christmas, but their plan was to stay a single night and then leave.Here, in their minds, was one more example of their daughter's incorrigible lunacy.Going to college in Vermont, of all places, instead of to any of the more reasonable choices in the Berkshires, New Haven, or even right there in Boston.Marrying (and there was no distinction here) a policeman.Choosing to work at an animal shelter with all that noise and those smells, and trying to find homes for tick-heavy mongrels.Now agreeing to house this strange black child.Most of the time Laura wasn't completely sure how much Alfred heard or understood, but she feared that he grasped a very great deal, and that only made her all the more determined to view the woods and the farm that separated their house from the village as a buffer zone--a barrier--that would keep all that meanness and hurt at a distance."Indians had been raiding the more outlying ranches for weeks, stealing horses and mules, and we knew they had murdered five settlers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.The bouquet he'd brought home the other day had been the first flowers he'd given her since the one-year anniversary of the girls' deaths.She picked up the phone before her voice mail kicked in, and sure enough it was Terry.Off and on over the past week there had been something in his voice that she found troubling, and she heard that something loud and clear now.How's your day going? he asked.Where are you? she asked in return, a reflex, before realizing that she hadn't answered his question.Just south of Shoreham, near the county line.You and Alfred having fun?Yup, we're fine, she said, and instantly she understood why she'd asked a question before responding to his.It was as if she had suddenly stopped trusting him.These days, wasn't she always asking him where he was the moment he called?What's he doing?Right now he's walking a Border collie.A girl named Rascal.Can he handle her?Yup.You need me to bring anything home for dinner? Pick something up in Middlebury, maybe?Dinner's taken care of, she said, and a moment or two later they said good-bye and hung up.When the phone was back in the cradle, she stood for a moment next to her desk.Outside the window she saw the dog leading Alfred back to the shelter, the leash between them as taut as a tightrope.They were walking into the sun, and Alfred was wearing the cap with the cavalry insignia the Heberts had given him.She wondered if there was a way she could ask Terry's brother if something had happened at deer camp.She didn't think there was, but that didn't stop her from pondering the idea.THE THINGS PEOPLE said to her about Alfred only drew her further away from the rest of the world, and closer to the boy--regardless of whether he talked or what he said when he did.You know, Laura, you can hardly tell he's an African-American--he might just be a boy with a very dark tan! So said Abby Rousch that afternoon at the supermarket, when Laura realized that dinner was not completely taken care of, after all, and so she and Alfred had stopped at the grocery store on their way home from the animal shelter.Alfred had been twenty-five or thirty feet further down the aisle, looking at the brightly colored cereal boxes, and so he hadn't heard Abby--her long, pale, elderly finger resting on the side of her age-speckled jaw as she spoke--when she offered Laura the words that she presumed would be comforting.Laura nodded, wondering if she would ever get used to these remarks, and then said, He's a beautiful boy, Abby, and brown is a beautiful color.I wouldn't want him to be anything but what he is.Of course you wouldn't, Abby said, as if she knew something that Laura did not, and she took that long finger of hers with the nail yellowed by age and tapped it gently on Laura's wrist.Laura guessed that people said this sort of thing to her weekly, even people who she thought should know better.People like the boy's teacher, a woman who couldn't have been more than thirty-five.I am completely color-blind, she had said proudly the first day Laura brought Alfred to the school, I treat all my students as if they were white.The fact that the teacher had felt the need to say such a thing--and to phrase it so badly--discouraged Laura.One day some weeks later when she drove Alfred to school, her fears were confirmed.The buses hadn't arrived yet, and so they were alone but for his teacher and a little girl whose name, she believed, was Kathleen.She watched Alfred boot up one of the two classroom computers, and saw he was having trouble finding his folder amidst the icons that appeared on the monitor screen.She realized, however, that she was at a loss as to how to help him.She looked to the teacher, but she was busy tacking posters about the rain forest to a corkboard, and seemed oblivious to the notion that one of her students might need some assistance.Yet a moment later when Kathleen merely glanced with raised eyebrows at the woman--before she had even opened her mouth--almost instantly the teacher put the posters down and was kneeling by the girl's side, explaining to her exactly how to access her folder.Her heart sank when Alfred looked into his lap and then shut down the computer, and she wished she knew how to convey to the woman that the boy--her boy--needed help, too, without making a scene and antagonizing the child's teacher.Even at church they weren't exempt from well-meaning but ill-advised pronouncements.Their first Sunday, one of the deacons bent at the waist and stooped his ancient shoulders so that he was almost Alfred's height, and with one hand on the boy's arm informed him, God loves all children.Black.Yellow.Whatever.It's good to have you here, son.During the moment that Sunday morning when the congregation greeted one another, she noticed that there were people around them who practically fell into her lap trying to shake Alfred's hand and people who did all that they could to avoid the child beside her.Her own parents--no, anyone's parents but hers--might have risen to the occasion and become surrogate grandparents, but they chose instead to remain almost predictably remote.They came north to meet the boy in the first days of autumn and then retreated south.They were going to come again at Christmas, but their plan was to stay a single night and then leave.Here, in their minds, was one more example of their daughter's incorrigible lunacy.Going to college in Vermont, of all places, instead of to any of the more reasonable choices in the Berkshires, New Haven, or even right there in Boston.Marrying (and there was no distinction here) a policeman.Choosing to work at an animal shelter with all that noise and those smells, and trying to find homes for tick-heavy mongrels.Now agreeing to house this strange black child.Most of the time Laura wasn't completely sure how much Alfred heard or understood, but she feared that he grasped a very great deal, and that only made her all the more determined to view the woods and the farm that separated their house from the village as a buffer zone--a barrier--that would keep all that meanness and hurt at a distance."Indians had been raiding the more outlying ranches for weeks, stealing horses and mules, and we knew they had murdered five settlers [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]