RACHEL'S SUMMER
67
I said, "It's a note Rachel wrote to somebody. Listen," and I
read it aloud.
I saw Mother smile, but she said, "What's so funny about
that?"
"Oh, I don't know," I said. "It just seems funny after all these
years. I didn't have any id.ea that Rachel would know-" I
stopped, not knowing how to explain what I meant, and added:
"She was a wise kid, wasn't she."
After a moment Mother said, "Yes, she was."
I was pleased, somehow, with the whole thing. I liked the
idea of knowing that Rachel was-well, sophisticated.
It
made her
kind of a contemporary, less a girl who had been dead more than
twenty years-and it made me know her and understand her better
too,
in a way that I couldn't have known her when she was alive at
sixteen and I was three years younger.
"If
Rachel had lived," I
said, "she'd probably have married in a year or two and be the
mother of twenty kids by now."
"Probably," Mother said.
"Either that, or been married and divorced ten times over."
"What makes you say that," Mother asked.
"Nothing, except that's the kind of person she was, or would
have become. She was so full of life-so
ready
for life, wasn't
she. Just waiting for it."
Mother said nothing. I folded the note and stuck it back in
the drawer. "It seems such a pity that that wonderful vitality, that
wonderful
talent
for life, couldn't have been used, somehow.
Because that's what it was, a real talent," I said. "Gosh, God
doesn't order things very well, does he, when he permits such
waste."
Mother went on sewing for awhile and
~en,
without looking
up, she said, "Are you asking me something?"
I didn't know what she meant and I said so.
"Are you trying to find out something, son? Have you ever
heard anything?"
"Mother," I said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Well, then," Mother said, "I'll tell you."
I was so surprised by all this that I was uncomfortable. I felt
as though I had intruded in some way. I knew I had stumbled upon
something I had no right to know, and I wished I hadn't. But there
