The River King by Alice Hoffman Page A

supper, nothing fancy, a broiled chicken breast perhaps, prepared with lemon and parsley, served with a baked potato. There was a cache of old cookbooks in the cabinets, never used, and she began to experiment with desserts, preparing grape-nut pudding one night, cranberry-prune compote the next, graham cracker chocolate cheesecake on Fridays.
    These suppers were by far the most delicious meals that had been set upon Miss Davis’s table for some time. She’d spent the past fifteen years eating canned soup and crackers in the evenings rather than face the ruckus in the dining hall. “I hope you don’t think I’ll raise your grade because of this,” she said every time she sat down to her supper.
    Carlin no longer bothered to remind her employer that she was not in Miss Davis’s freshman class, having had the bad fortune to be scheduled into Mr. Herman’s Ancient Civilizations seminar, which she found a complete bore. Still, she never replied to Miss Davis’s remarks. Instead, Carlin remained at the sink washing dishes, her posture straight, her hair ashen in the dim light. She rarely spoke. She only stirred the pot of soup on the rear burner of the stove, nearly ready for the next day’s lunch, and dreamed of a pair of boots she’d noticed in the window of Hingram’s Shoe Shop, black leather with silver buckles. She thought about the way she’d lied to Harry McKenna, not only about her family’s background, but about her own experience in matters of love. In truth, she had never even been kissed before. She’d been running from love, exactly as her mother had raced straight toward it, headlong and without any doubts. Now, her involvement with Harry had knocked the wind out of her. She had set out on a path she neither understood nor recognized, and because she was accustomed to being in control, the whole world seemed to be spinning past her.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you anyway?” Helen asked one evening. Carlin had worked for her for several weeks and hadn’t said more than a mouthful of words. “Cat got your tongue?”
    Helen’s own cantankerous cat, Midnight, was sitting on her lap, waiting for bits of chicken. The cat was ancient, and although wounded in many battles, it insisted upon going out every evening. It leapt down and scratched at the door until Carlin went to let it out. Twilight was coming earlier, and the low clouds turned scarlet at dusk.
    â€œI’ll bet you’re in love.” Helen was quite smug about her ability to tell which girls had been stricken each October.
    â€œDid you want custard?” Carlin returned to the stove. “It’s butterscotch.”
    Rather than admit she was desperate for money, Carlin told people she was helping Miss Davis in return for a community service credit. She had planned to tell this to Gus also, if she ever got the chance to talk to him, for it seemed he had begun to avoid her. If he noticed her heading toward him, he’d manage to disappear behind a hedge or a tree, skittering down a path or a lane before Carlin could catch up. He disapproved of Harry, that was the problem, and lately it seemed as if he disapproved of Carlin as well. In fact, it was a single image that kept him at bay. One afternoon, Carlin had leaned over the gate outside St. Anne’s to kiss Harry good-bye, even though she should have known better than to share a kiss over a gate, an action that it is said to cause a rift between a girl and her beloved before the day is through. When she looked up, Carlin saw that Gus was watching. Before she could call out to him, he had vanished, like those foolhardy assistants in magic shows who crawl into trunks to be dismembered and put back together again. Unlike those individuals, however, Gus had not reappeared.
    People said he was taking his meals in his room, and that he no longer changed his clothes, and there were those who reported he would not