Three Women Read Online Free Page B

the trouble. How good it would be not to think, not to fight, not to wonder.
    Her father shuffled in on his way to the bathroom, sleep still heavy in his eyes. "You up?" he mumbled. "Fight with Phil?"
    "No, Pa. Just up early."
    He closed the bathroom door and she heard him belch painfully.
    I can't sit here all day like this. I've got to get out. Then she thought once more of Phil calling. He would tell her folks about their getting married and everyone would worry about where she had gone. No, she had to stay home until he called.
    One by one, Ma and Mike and Pa got up for the day. She listened to the yawning and the brushing of teeth while she sat on the hard wood of the chair.
    By eleven o'clock she was washing the dishes, letting the water scald her hands and turn the skin red. She scrubbed the plates with all the bottled-up energy surging from inside her.
    Mike, too skinny for his height, his shoulders stooping awkwardly, commented to her, "You're a strange bird today."
    Paula didn't answer.
    Ma put on her grey Sunday dress and combed brilliantine into her hair that was supposed to smell of rose petals. "Leave your sister be," she said with merciful tuition. She smiled anxiously at her daughter and told her not to bother drying. "They can drain," she said, "if you have better things to do."
    "It's all right, Ma. I'm all right"
    "Of course you are."
    She wished she could reassure her mother. Convince her that nothing was really wrong. But she wanted to throw her arms around that neck and cry and cry. "It's really okay, Ma," Paula insisted as she picked up the towel and started to dry. "Phil asked me to marry him last night. I guess I just don't know."
    Gratefully she watched her mother's concern relax.
    "Baby," she said and hugged Paula with relief. "My little baby."
    She felt her mother's tears wet against her cheek and her own tears came furiously burning from somewhere deep inside.
    "What the hell's goin’ on in here?" Mike's disgust rang through the house.
    "Oh, pipe down." His father pushed him out. "Go build yourself a hot rod."
    "Aah, women!" He zipped up his jacket and slammed out of the apartment
    The old man wandered uncomfortably around the kitchen and pretended to interest himself in polishing his shoes. He brushed the tips with violent concentration.
    Paula pulled herself away from her mother, aware of a throbbing in her temples. No use to cry. It solved nothing. With a paper napkin, she wiped her mother's cheeks and then her own. "I really didn't sleep much, you know. Maybe that's why things look so big this morning. I’ll take an aspirin and go for a walk."
    Her father said, "You want company?"
    "No, Pa, thanks. I just want to clear out this head."
    She found some aspirin in the medicine cabinet, bundled the scarf around her neck and pulled on her heavy mittens. She didn't much care what she looked like, even if it was-Sunday. "If Phil calls, tell him—Oh, tell him anything.''
    She ran out and down the steps as if bursting out from under smothering blankets.
    * * *
    The dreary Sunday lay heavily on all the closed stores with their awnings flapping and whipping in the wind. She strode down Third Avenue, coat collar turned up and head bent into the wind. The grey sky, heavy with its burden of snow, stretched endlessly above her. She walked and walked, not thinking, not wanting to think, hoping perhaps she might outrun her crazy thoughts and return to the familiar nest of long-known living.
    She knew where she was walking; her legs moved without her brain's direction. I can't go there, she thought. It's nerve. It's gall. I wasn't invited. Her legs insisted, moving her block after block, seeming to gain energy and purpose as she progressed. When she had come twenty blocks to Forty Second Street, she forced herself to stop in the Woolworth doorway. If I knew her last name, she thought, I could look up her telephone. She went into a bar and searched for Byrne Carson. The name wasn't listed.
    Her legs drove her