Free Desert of the Heart: A Novel by Jane Rule

tomorrow.”
    “And if you want to read, you just go ahead and read. I’ve got my own magazine.”
    “I don’t really want to. I’ve read myself out, I think.”
    “You’ve been working too hard,” Frances said.
    “Have I? I don’t really know what else to do with myself.” Evelyn took a quick mouthful of almost straight whiskey.
    “You’re just like Ann. When she decides to work, she locks herself up in that terrible attic room of hers, and not even Walter can budge her until she’s so exhausted she’s made herself sick.”
    “What does she work at?”
    “She’s a cartoonist, a very good one. You’ve probably seen some of her cartoons. She sells to all the magazines. You must ask her to show you some.”
    “I’d like to see them.”
    “I’m worried about Ann,” Frances said.
    “Are you? Why?”
    “I don’t know what to do for her. The trouble is, I don’t know what Ann wants out of life. She’s not nineteen any longer. She’s twenty-five. Most girls her age are married and having children. Ann’s such an attractive girl, she could have had half-a-dozen husbands by now, but she doesn’t seem to want even one.”
    “She must have seen a lot in Reno to discourage her.”
    “Well, I don’t know.” Frances took a long drink. “I used to worry about that, too; but we all see a lot of dying, and it doesn’t seem to keep us from living. Reno’s no worse than anyplace else, really. If you want to find mistakes, you don’t have to come here. Walter and Ann have heard a lot and seen a lot, but it doesn’t have to hurt them, does it, to know something about the world?”
    “I’ve always argued that way about books,” Evelyn said, “but it never occurred to me to argue that way about life.”
    “Somehow I don’t worry so much about being wrong for Walter; he’s my own, and anyway he’s a steady sort of boy. If the world didn’t shake him up a little now and then, he’d be dull. He’s like me.” Evelyn smiled a protest, but Frances went on. “Ann’s not mine. I’ve taken care of her since she was ten, but I’m not her mother. I’ve never really tried to be.”
    “Is her own mother living?”
    “I suppose so, somewhere. But not for Ann. And her father’s dead. When he was alive, I didn’t have to worry about Ann. When he was alive, I didn’t worry about anything. But she hasn’t anyone but me now. And who am I? Frances, not really a mother, not really a friend, just a pair of hands and a familiar face.”
    “Do you think Ann’s unhappy?”
    “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Frances poured herself a drink and offered the bottle to Evelyn. “I think she ought to be unhappy, but then I don’t understand her. I’m not very bright, and she is.”
    “You’re a regular wise woman, Frances,” Evelyn said.
    “No, no, I’m not. I’m a very narrow, silly woman really. Even things I used to know I begin to forget. It makes me wonder if I ever really knew them. Things Ann’s father taught me. He used to say to me, ‘Frances, you collect conventions and clichés like old family china. Just pack them away now. Put them in the attic. If you leave them around here, they’ll just get broken.’ And, you know, while I lived with him, I never missed them; but now, when the house feels lonely, empty of him, like a public place, I catch myself bringing them out again. Walter doesn’t mind them so much, but Ann barks her shins on them every time. She’s like her father. She can’t live in a clutter. But I forget how I lived without it all those years. I did live, very happily, but now I seem to need something in my house to keep me company: memories, the old notions of my grandmother, incense in the bathroom. I haven’t any taste. I’m sentimental. Wall plaques, souvenirs. I’d like a great big plate with his picture in the middle of it. ‘Happiness,’ it would say at the top, and at the bottom, ‘Reno, 1943 to 1953.’ And I’d like widow’s weeds and a wedding