Gentlehands Read Online Free Page B

“That’s something my mother is always saying.”
    “On the contrary,” he said. “‘Spend all you have for loveliness,/Buy it, and never count the cost;/For one white singing hour of peace/ Count many a year of strife well lost./And for a breath of ecstasy/Give all you have been or could be.’”
    Somebody spouting off poetry always made me a little self-conscious, unless it was a teacher who had to for a class assignment or something. I couldn’t think of anything to say.
    “One of your American poets wrote that,” said my grandfather. “Sara Teasdale.”
    “What you’re telling me is she’s worth it, even if I do have to bring her out here to impress her.”
    “What I’m telling you,” he said, “is that you’re worth it, too; that with a little polish, you won’t have to bring her out here, although she’s always welcome.”
    “I haven’t even been out of Seaville,” I said, “except to go to Disneyland once with my folks…and Block Island another time with my dad.”
    My grandfather smiled. “It isn’t where you’vebeen,” he said. “An ass who goes traveling doesn’t come back a horse.”
    “She’s also older than I am,” I said. “I don’t know how much older, but she is.”
    “A woman you love is always older than you are, even when she’s younger.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” I said.
    “When you love a woman, she seems secret and mysterious,” said my grandfather, “things you associate with the full bloom instead of the bud.”
    “She’s rich, too,” I said. “The Penningtons have tons of money.”
    “Obstacles are challenges for winners, and excuses for losers,” said my grandfather.
    “I never thought of it that way,” I said.
    Skye came back from the bathroom then, and my grandfather walked us down to her car.
    “I hope I see you again, Mr. Trenker,” said Skye. “This has been such a super evening, and Mummy’s not going to believe a raccoon ate out of my hand. I don’t even believe it myself. I can’t wait to spring keeshond on her, too. She’ll die if she’s never heard of one, you know, it’s like telling the Pope he doesn’t know all his cardinals or something.”
    “Come again,” my grandfather said, looking straight at me, “if you want to.”
    “If we want to!” Skye exclaimed. “Does a starlingwant one of your sunflower seeds!”
    “Not very much,” said my grandfather. “He has trouble getting the shells open.”
    “The one time I wanted to show off and say a starling or a blue jay or something besides just a plain bird, I pick the wrong bird.” Skye laughed. “I like you so much, Mr. Trenker. You’re subtle!”
    “I try to be,” my grandfather said.
    All the way back to Beauregard, Skye did seventy, talking nonstop about him.
    “You don’t mind going fast, do you, Buddy?” she asked me.
    “It doesn’t feel like we’re going too fast,” I told her, but it did, and we were, and I knew I wasn’t going to do anything to stop it.

4
    I TRIED TO CONVINCE SKYE TO LET ME DRIVE TO Beauregard with her that night, and hitch a ride back to my house, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She dropped me and took off like a rocket. I saw my father standing in our driveway by his Toyota, smoking a cigarette, watching me. He was in uniform because he was working nights that week.
    “That was a Jensen she was driving,” I said. “Did you ever hear of a Jensen?”
    “Did she ever hear of a speed limit?” he said.
    “Oh, Dad .”
    “It isn’t funny, Buddy,” he said.
    I stood there and he stood there and then he said, “Where’d you go?”
    I didn’t want to tell him then. He wasn’t in the greatest mood, and I didn’t want to open that whole can of worms at the end of a beautiful evening.
    “We just rode around,” I said.
    “Rode around at eighty miles an hour?”
    “She wasn’t doing eighty.”
    “She was doing close to it,” he said. He took a drag on his cigarette and twirled his car keys in his hand.