Page 17 of Saint Céline
“I wasn’t bored,” I told her.
“You were reading a book about soil.”
“Okay, I admit I was a little desperate.”
Her mouth twitched like she wanted to smile but had not quite decided if she was allowed to. I took the book carefully, noticing how clean her hands looked next to mine. Her nails were short and neat. Mine still had dirt under them from helping my mother carry grocery boxes from the car that morning.
“You can come in if you want,” I said.
She stepped inside and looked around the cottage with open curiosity. No disgust on her face. No pity either. That made it harder somehow. I could have handled her looking down on the small rooms and the faded sofa. I already knew how to feel small in that way. But Katherine looked at everything like it mattered simply because it belonged to me. Her eyes moved over the little kitchen, the laundry folded on the chair, the bowl of oranges my mother had bought because they were on sale at the market in town.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” she said after a minute.
My face warmed.
Then she added, “But nicer.”
“Nicer than what?”
“My room.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. “Your room is probably bigger than this whole cottage.”
“It is,” she said, and she did not sound embarrassed about it at all. “That doesn’t make it nicer.”
I did not know what to do with an answer like that. Rich people complained about things in a different way. They made their unhappiness sound delicate, like something they kept behind glass so it would not get dirty. Back in Portland, unhappiness had a smell. It was beer soaked into the carpet, old smoke in the curtains, and my father’s voice sliding under the bedroom door at night.
Katherine set the rest of the books on the kitchen table. “I brought these too. You don’t have to read them, but they’re better than gardening manuals.”
There were five books altogether. Two novels, one about animals, an old science encyclopedia for children, and a book of fairy tales with real gold on the cover. I touched the gold lightly with one finger.
“Are these yours?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re allowed to give them to me?”
“I’m not giving them to you. I’m lending them.”
“Oh.”
“But for a long time,” she said.
That felt like a real gift. I looked at her again. This time, she looked away first.
My mother came down the stairs carrying a basket of laundry and stopped so fast that one towel slid over the edge and landed on the floor.
“Miss Montgomery,” she said.
Katherine turned.
“Hello.”
My mother’s eyes went from Katherine to me and then to the books on the table. “Selena,” she said slowly, “did you invite Miss Montgomery inside?”
“She knocked.”
“That is not what I asked.”
