Evergreen by Belva Plain Page B

here for your children to know, except for Joseph’s mother, of course.”
    “She’s sixty-four,” Anna said.
    “Is she? I would have thought even more, she seems so old,” Ruth remarked.
    “She’s had a hard life. We wanted to bring her today, she’s never been at the beach. In all these years, imagine! But she wouldn’t come.”
    “What will you do when she gets too old or sick to keep the store?” Ruth was curious. “Do you suppose Joseph will want her to live with you?”
    “I don’t know. We’ve never talked about it,” Anna said, suddenly troubled. That gloomy, sour-smelling old woman in the house! Then came a wave of shame and pity. Poor thing, poor thing! To be old in another woman’s house, a strange young woman who didn’t want you!
    “If that ever happens and Joseph wants her, why, well have to do it, that’s all,” she said quietly.
    “You’re a kind girl, Anna. I’m glad for both your sakes that I sent Joseph down to talk to you that day.”
    “I’ve never thanked you,” Anna said, with embarrassment.
    “Pshaw! I wasn’t looking for thanks! But
he
thanked me, he was quite mad about you from the very first time. He thought you didn’t like him, that’s why he was afraid for so long to talk about marriage. You know,” she explained, “he thought you were in love with somebody else, but I told him you weren’t. If it had been anyone but Joseph Iwould have let him go on thinking so, because generally it’s a good idea to keep men guessing. But Joseph is different, he’s so—” Ruth sought the word—“honest. Yes, that’s it, he’s so honest.”
    “That’s true,” Anna said. “He is.” And she sat quite still while Ruth talked on, only half hearing, feeling, in the pouring sunshine, how good it was to be like this. Down at the water’s edge Joseph was throwing a ball to the boys. He looked like a boy himself, fast and happy. She could hear his voice ring. She hadn’t known he knew how to play. This was the way a man ought to be, the way he ought to live. Perhaps this was what God intended for man when He put him on the earth, to be free, to run in the bright air with all the other living things.
    But no, how was that possible? Who was to pay for it? Always it came back to that. This outing today, the carfare, the food, they had to be paid for. “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread,” Joseph always said. He liked to quote from the Bible. It seemed that he could find an explanation for everything in the Bible.
    After a while the men came back and sat down. “Feeling all right, Anna?” Joseph asked.
    “Just wonderful!”
    “Tell me if you get tired.”
    “Tired! I’m tired of doing nothing!” She took her crocheting, a long rectangle of white lace, out of her basket.
    “Solly, look!” Ruth cried. “It’s gorgeous! What are you making?”
    Anna felt suddenly shy. “A cover for the baby carriage. It will go over a sateen lining, pink or blue, as soon as we know.”
    Ruth shook her head admiringly. “You know how to do things, Anna! You’re so clever, between baking and handwork—”
    “Tell her,” Joseph interrupted, “about the carriage,” and went on to tell about it himself. “We bought it last week on Broadway. White wicker, with a top that rolls back for sun or shade, whichever you want.”
    “Oh,” Ruth said, “the first baby is wonderful. You’ve plenty of time for it—Vera and June, stop throwing sand at Cecile! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
    “Bet you don’t know what sand is,” Harry said importantly.
    “Sand? Why, it’s what’s on the beach,” his mother answered.
    “Hah! It’s rocks, ground fine, after millions and millions of years. I knew you didn’t know!”
    Anna picked up a handful. The fine, dry stuff poured between her fingers, sharp, twinkling particles on her skin. Yes, it was like pieces of rock, the shining splinters in rock.
    “So, you are getting an education from my son,” Solly