Read The Girl Who Passed for Normal for Free Online Page B

eight.”
    “How big is the garden,” Barbara asked.
    Mary Emerson waved her hand. “As endless as it looks.” She stood, lazily, and walked over to the window. Barbara followed.
    “We keep up this little bit of gravel and rock here, and there are a few flowers and things in the spring. Oh, and lilies in the fountain, besides the fish. But all that beyond the little hedge is ours — it stretches right over to Via San Sebastian. It’s pretty useless. No one’s allowed to build on it, of course, and we couldn’t possibly keep up a garden a mile long. So you see it’s just a sort of wasteland. We call it the wilderness. It’s full of vipers and scorpions and things.” She wrinkled her nose. “I never go in there.”
    “Does Catherine keep out of it?”
    “No. Sometimes she gets tired of praying to the fish, so she takes herself off in there to pray to the grass and the nettles and the snakes, but —” she turned to Barbara and smiled, “I really think she goes because the local boys climb over the wall at the other end and Catherine goes out to meet them. But boys or snakes, I wouldn’t go out there if I were you.”
    “Do you have any serum in the house, in case anyone gets bitten?”
    Mary Emerson looked surprised. “No,” she said. “Do you think I ought to?” But before Barbara could reply, she took her arm and led her back to the sofa. “Do tell me something about yourself,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you?”
    Barbara did mind. “There’s not that much to tell,” she said. “I think I told you more or less everything in London.”
    “Oh, no! You didn’t tell me anything in London. What about your marriage? You said you were married, didn’t you?”
    “I was. My husband died.”
    “Recently?”
    “About three months ago.”
    “Mine died about eight years ago,” Mary Emerson said with a smile. “What did your husband do?”
    “He was a professor of history at Oxford.”
    Mary Emerson looked shocked. “Good heavens,” she drawled. Then, quite abruptly, she said, “What made you come to Rome?”
    Barbara heard a noise in the hall and thought it must be the myna, or someone about to come in. But no one appeared, so she went on, with a frown, “You asked me to.”
    “I know I did, my dear, but that’s — incidental, isn’t it? You could have found a job in London.”
    “Yes, I know. But —” she paused. She didn’t want to explain to this woman, but she felt helpless, “I wanted to get away.” Mary Emerson was looking at her, unconvinced. “And then my mother is getting old, and when my husband died she wanted me to go home and live with her and — oh, I don’t know. I thought it was better to get away. And then, when I met you — I’m just thirty-four,” she said quickly. “I was sure that if I went home to live with my mother I’d never have another chance.”
    “Of what? Getting married again?” Mary Emerson stood up as she asked the question, and began to walk, very slowly, across the room toward the door to the hall.
    “No. I don’t know if I ever want to get married again.”
    Mary Emerson, in the middle of the room, laughed. “Why, didn’t you like it the first time?”
    Barbara blushed. “Oh, yes. I was very happy. But — I don’t know. I suppose that now, afterward, it seems it wasn’t really quite enough. But then I suppose it’s too soon to say, isn’t it?”
    “I agree with you,” Mary Emerson said. She pulled the hall door open, and behind it there was a pale girl with short fair hair, with her head bent and her mouth open. She had a brace on her teeth, and she was crying.
    Mary Emerson laughed, a loud, almost coarse laugh, and taking the girl by the arm she led her into the room. “This is Catherine,” she said. “Catherine, this is Mrs. Michaels.” She looked at Barbara with a frown and said, “Are you Mrs. Michaels?”
    Barbara shook her head. “No. I’m Miss Michaels. I was Mrs. — something else.”
    “This is Miss