Anger Read Free

hard as you do? I just wish you didn’t have to take it so hard.”
    They sat for a few moments in silence.
    â€œI feel driven all the time,” Anna said then. “There is never any peace. Except when I’m singing.”
    â€œPeace?” Teresa smiled.
    â€œDon’t tease me … besides it’s almost time for my lesson. We must get back. You know, Mamma, about peace. Most of the time I feel like a swan muddling about on land, heavy and no use to anyone, and then when I am singing I become a swan who has glided into a pond and swims, in its element, free …”
    â€œYes, and afterwards, the depression, the letdown,” her mother said, as they walked on toward the stand where Anna would take a taxi to her lesson.
    Anna realized it had been an unusual moment between them. They were not always able to talk as intimately as they did that morning. There were days when Anna was simply not there, absorbed in thoughts of her own. There were days when she felt as pent up as a wild animal in a cage, pacing about the apartment, days when the slightest frustration brought on a storm. So it had been since she was a child, “like a bolt of loose electricity” her father used to say. “You have to learn control.”
    Well, she had learned it, Anna thought, lifting her chin. Every one of her teachers had praised her control of her instrument. But control of herself? Anna wondered sometimes whether she would ever learn that. Punishment had never helped. That was her father’s way, to tame the wild child by making her go to bed for the day, for instance. And what happened? She closed herself off against him. She used the punishment as some kind of battle, threw herself with fury into an act of defiance like painting a dragon on the wall!
    For nearly a year Ned found himself on the periphery of the life of a prima donna, unable to get inside it. After a concert there were always flowers, other men’s flowers as well as his own. Anna was away a great deal for concerts in Philadelphia or Cincinnati or Chicago. And when she was in Boston she was working hard on whatever music she would be singing soon.
    She accepted the homage of the people who came to the Green Room, was merry, responsive, and charming, immensely charming, and she knew it. But if she was conscious of Ned as a person in his own right, he was not aware of it.
    And for some time his invitations to dinner or a concert were refused on the grounds of her work. He had got quite accustomed to opening the envelope in her bold hand and reading, “Dear Mr. Fraser, I wish I could, but I am horribly tied up and obsessed by work these days. I’m truly sorry. The freesias are still delicious. Thank you again.”
    Ned tore up these notes and buried himself in the bank. But he could not get her out of his mind. Was she really as indifferent as she seemed? Had she for instance any idea who he was? And how could he make himself known? It seemed absurd that it was necessary. And it did not help that Ernesta, in whom he confided, was clearly delighted. “You’ve met your match, old Ned,” she said.
    â€œShe doesn’t even know who I am,” he said miserably. “We’re not even antagonists, Ernesta. I don’t exist.”
    But Anna, amused and a little touched by the persistence of this unknown admirer, did discover through a chance remark at a dinner party in Louisburg Square who Ned Fraser was.
    â€œGood heavens,” she murmured, twisting a wine glass in her hand, “he seems so diffident, and,” with a gentle laugh, “quite ordinary.”
    The gentleman on her left, who had not interested her until then, chuckled, and gave her an appraising glance. “You know him?”
    â€œOh, he sends flowers and comes to the Green Room … I don’t know him. I just see him out of the corner of my eye on these occasions,” she said, so offhandedly that her companion was