Free Sweet Water by Christina Baker Kline Page A

her arm. I took a deep breath. “Part of it is that I wanted to get out of the city. I’ve always lived in cities. I think I came down here looking for something—something I’ve been missing.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like …” I shrugged. “Trees, green grass. All the stuff you probably take for granted. And I’ve always lived in apartments. The idea of having a whole house to yourself is incredible to me.”
    She didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead.
    “And I think part of it is that it just seemed strange not to know you, not to know—my mother, and everything. It was so weird to find out my grandfather had died and I didn’t even know what he was like.”
    “Well, if that’s it,” she said, her voice tart, “I could have told you all you need to know on the phone. He was crotchety and foolish.”
    Again I was taken aback.
    “That surprises you? Why—because I was married to him for so long? You marry somebody, you vow to stay together, and you do it because that’s a sacred vow. Till death do you part. Not until you getsick of each other.” She rubbed an imaginary speck of dust off the bureau by the door. “You probably wouldn’t have liked each other much. He had a hard time with girls who did what they felt like.” She looked at me. “You know, don’t you, that everybody’s wondering what you want from them.”
    “What?”
    “They think they’re going to have to take care of you. You’ll get nervous out there in that old house and expect them to help.”
    “Is that what
you
think?”
    She shifted her feet and seemed to settle into herself. Her gaze was blank and direct. “Well, I wondered.”
        After Clyde left I sat on the bed, bouncing up and down on it a little. I ran my fingers over the quilt and lay down, my legs hanging over the edge, my hands over my face. The more I thought about it, the more I thought Clyde was right: I really had no business being there. I wondered if I should just turn around and leave, with all my belongings still in the car. If I left now I could be out of the state by dark.
    As I lay on the bed I drifted into a troubled sleep. I was driving in the dark on a road between a tall brick wall and a cliff. If I veered even slightly to the left, the car scraped the wall; to the right, the wheels wobbled over the edge. There was too much traffic behind me to stop. The steering wheel was slippery in my sweaty hands. My teeth were clenched tight.
    I woke to a soft, insistent tapping on the door and sat up in a daze, trying to concentrate. The room was still bright with sunlight. “It’s six-thirty,” Clyde was saying. “Anything you want ironed?”
    I couldn’t think. “No, thanks.” Her footsteps faded back down the hall and I sat forward, rubbing my eyes.
    Rummaging through my bag, I found a purple floral cotton sundress with tiny buttons up the front and realized that it did, in fact, need ironing.
Damn.
I went out to the kitchen, which was thick withthe smells of baking. Clyde was setting the table and listening to the radio. “I can do this,” I said, holding up the dress. “I just need to know where the iron is.”
    “Give it to me,” she said. “You need to get ready.”
    “You’ve got things to do.”
    “They’ll get done. Give me the dress.”
    I went back to my room and stripped out of my clothes. Taking a washcloth from the pile of towels Clyde had left on the bureau, I went into the adjoining bathroom. As I thought about the plans for the evening, a ball of dread formed in my stomach. I flipped on the light, put my hair into a short ponytail, and began to wash my face.
        Alice and the baby were the first to arrive. She carried him on one hip and pushed the doorbell with her elbow. The buzz, long and insistent, brought Clyde and me from different sides of the house to answer it.
    Alice appeared to be in her late twenties. Her blond hair was cut stylishly short, her freckled nose was long and straight, and she had