Read The Gazebo: A Novel for Free Online

done since graduation, answering telephones and managing the front desk for the elderly, forgetful Dr. Somers. Margaret didn’t particularly like sitting all day at the desk behind the sliding frosted glass window, listening to the phlegmy coughs of patients in the waiting room, occasionally getting up to replace the array of magazines with newer ones, or to feed the sluggish goldfish that swam in a tank bythe window, but she never complained. Still, the idea of a similar future was very depressing to Claire, especially now that she had met Martin.
    “Let me ask you something,” Martin suddenly said to her one afternoon in the meadow. “If you had money, and no restrictions at all, and didn’t have to worry about what people thought of you, what would you do with your life?”
    “Oh,” said Claire right away, “I would definitely travel. Go to Europe and take a tour of all the great art there, and study sculpture for real.” She paused. “But it’s so ridiculous to think about this,” she said. “I don’t even have a passport. I’ve hardly ever been out of Long–wood Falls.”
    “Europe,” said Martin, who had been there several times with his parents, “is absolutely nothing like Longwood Falls.”
    “What would
you
do?” she asked him.
    “I’d go with you,” he said without hesitation. They were both silent. During all the afternoons they’d been meeting, they hadn’t really discussed the inevitable, but it lay ahead of them whether they liked it or not. In SeptemberMartin would be going to Princeton, and Claire would be staying behind, finding a local job and living at home, her life remaining static, with nothing much to look forward to. But Martin’s life would keep moving forward, taken up by studying and term papers and spirited football games and wealthy girls. On weekends he would dance with these slender girls who had strings of cultured pearls encircling their slender, white throats. Claire didn’t know which was worse—the idea of sharing him with
them
, or sharing him with anyone.
    They didn’t talk much about their upcoming separation in the fall, politely ignoring it as though it would go away on its own. He had no desire to go to Princeton, wishing instead he could go somewhere to learn to be a chef and take Claire with him. She, too, wished she didn’t have to listen to her parents. Her mother in particular was always watchful and frightened, as though convinced that something bad would inevitably happen to her younger daughter.
    Claire’s father was less worried. He was preoccupied by his work, which was constant and difficult. Lucas Swift was a maintenanceworker employed by the town to garden, prune, and plant as well as to repair sidewalks and fences and maintain the gazebo in the middle of the square. He had recently enlisted a cousin to help him with his work, and now the two men were calling their business Swift Maintenance, which they had stenciled across the side of a truck. The work was increasingly demanding, and Claire’s father came home at the end of the day in a sweat and feeling like a dog who just wanted to curl up and sleep. The Swifts were a struggling family but not impoverished. Once in a while there was an inexpensive steak in the refrigerator, and though the household wasn’t fueled by laughter and play, at least everyone got along. They were not one of Tolstoy’s happy families, but they managed.
    Happiness, in fact, had always seemed like a somewhat false concept to Claire. She’d been a slightly melancholy girl all her life, yet when she was alone with Martin she knew happiness wasn’t false, only elusive. But now she had caught it by its wriggling tail, and here it was in the form of this boy with dark hair and a fading bruise and expressive hands. Theycontinued to tell each other things, including the most personal stories from their lives; he even told her about his afternoon spent on the floor of the pantry with Nicole the cook.
    Claire and