Summary
A short story is presented.
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Extract
Leaf House
The night Martha's father died in a hospital bed under light the color of yellowed cellophane, there were sounds of crickets coming from die foundation of the house, and fireflies pulsing, eerie and tender, at the edge of the woods. Martha left home and walked two miles to the center of town, past Filley Park and its shadows gathering like skirt folds, past the hardware store's smell of loam and chlorine, the Mobil station and its brilliant fluorescence, the library's brick façade where the gnarled roots of trees buckled the sidewalk. She crossed the town green, the grass cool and almost dewy, to the sidewalk that circled the new Wintonbury Mall, a maze of offices and shops with a fountain at its center. When Michael pulled into the parking lot she simply stepped off the curb in front of his car and he stopped and she got in. She was seventeen. This is how she remembered it happening. It may have been that her skirt, a flimsy wrap-around, had blown open as she stepped down off the curb, or there had been something slightly desperate about her smile, or the way she held her hands out in front of her. He may have had to step on the brakes to avoid hitting her, but she didn't recall hearing the squeal of tires, or feeling any threat of injury. She would attend her father's funeral at the Sacred Heart Church with her sorrow checked by the memory of what she'd done on the small, narrow seats of Michael's silver MG.
Michael already had a girlfriend, one he took out to restaurants in neighboring towns, places like Pettibone's Tavern or the Chart House where Martha had gone as a child. He told Martha they sat in booths and talked, or in his car parked out under the stars and talked, and he claimed she let him kiss her, but nothing more went on. At the time, it had been easy for Martha to pretend this girlfriend meant nothing to him. When she was with him he looked at her with such longing, his eyes so intensely blue they took on a shade of misery she still saw years ...See the full content of this document
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