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PAGE
CHAPTER
24 SAMPLE
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BOOKS PAGE
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Chapter 24
Testing the Hypothesis, Part 2
WAS SITTING IN DUDLEY’S CHAIR, looking into the fire, waiting for a visit
from Patti. The night was warm enough not to require a fire; it might
even have been warm enough to make a fire ridiculous; but I required a
fire for atmosphere. I was Dudlifying myself, putting myself through
a course of Beakerization to prepare myself for Patti’s visit and the resumption
of our experimental investigation into the matter of my paternity.
The transformation seemed to require my sitting in Dudley’s chair before
the fireplace, and it seemed to require a fire in the fireplace.
The fire hadn’t lit right away, so I’d torn pages from the magazines in
the rack beside Dudley’s chair to keep it going. A haze of smoke
still filled the room, even though I’d opened the windows. I had
begun reading a story in one of the magazines, but when I followed the
“continued” line, I found that the page on which the story concluded had
been one of those I’d burned to get the fire going. I was sucking
on one of Dudley’s pipes and trying to decide whether the struggling young
painter in the story would manage to persuade the pretty young waitress—actually
a struggling young actress—to pose for him, and, if so, how he would manage
to do it, when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I said.
“Dudley?” asked a sweet voice at the other end of
the line.
“No,” I said without thinking, “this is—”
“Dudley, it’s Ella.”
“Huh? Oh. ‘Ella.’ Um, good
evening, ‘Ella.’ How are you?”
“I’m fine, Dud. I was wondering if I could
come over and visit you for a while.”
“More homework, I suppose?”
“Homework? Oh, yeah, that’s it. More
homework.”
“Of course. I’d be glad to help you.
Come right over, my dear.”
“I have to change my clothes first.”
“Oh.”
“I won’t be long. I’m just going to go up
to my room and change my clothes.”
“Okay.”
“Just going to run up to my room—” A giggle.
“—and change my clothes.”
“Oh. Your room. I see.”
“I’ll bet. Here I go—up to my room.
See you later.”
I went upstairs to Dudley’s study. With the
light out, I looked across the way at the window of the room in my grandparents’
house that had been my mother’s bedroom. Had I understood Patti correctly?
Was I, as Dudley, actually going to see the light go on in the room and
then see Patti, playing the part of my mother, begin undressing, like the
shy girl in the young painter’s unheated studio, assuming that he had found
the words to persuade her to accompany him there and then had found the
words to persuade her to begin unbuttoning her blouse? I stood in
the dark wondering what those words would be, when the light did indeed
go on in the room across the way, and there was Patti in the doorway with
my grandmother by her side, the two of them performing a pantomime, Patti
in the role of a distraught young girl bespattered by a passing car, and
my grandmother playing a kindly grandmother more than willing to help her.
Patti pouted, plucked at her skirt, wrinkled her brow, slumped in exasperation,
gesticulated to indicate the madcap driver careering along oblivious to
the puddles and to her, and reinacted her leap backward, too late, alas,
to avoid the wave of muddy water, and then—with a smile and a shake of
her head at the way good luck sometimes comes right along with bad—produced
a change of clothes from a paper bag that she was holding; my grandmother
pouted in sympathy, patted and petted Patti to comfort and calm her, smiled
at the change of clothes, indicated the dressing table, then turned and
left the room, closing the door behind her.
Without once looking my way, Patti began unbuttoning
her blouse.
WHEN THE DEAR GIRL arrived at the front door a few minutes later, I
was in quite a state. All the ardor of a young man in love had set
my heart to pounding and sent my blood pulsing through my veins, while
the wisdom, propriety, and caution of a middle-aged—oh, let us not say
that, not “middle-aged”—let us say rather that the wisdom of a man no longer
quite so young nor nearly so foolish as he once had been counseled me to
calm myself, to still my throbbing heart, cool my ardor, calm my passions:
to behave myself.
I opened the door with a trembling hand.
“Hi, Dud,” said the innocent darling.
What would she have said, I wondered, if she had
known that a thousand heartbeats earlier I had watched with hungry eyes
while her schoolgirl’s garb fell from her body, the white blouse slipping
from her shoulders, the plaid skirt dropping down her creamy thighs, until
all, all was revealed, all her charms, more than I could allow myself to
recall while she was standing there, so sweet, so pure.
“Come in,” I said, trying not to sound like a spider
welcoming a fly.
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