The Painted Kiss Read Free Page A

scrubbing of our chapped hands with freezing-cold water. It was the precise calculation of how long each of our steps should be, and the angle at which we should hold the prayer book in church. She watched us all of the time, and when she couldn’t, Father did. Our mother could leap to our defense or come down on us hardest of all, and we never knew which it would be. But Helene I could always depend on.
    “How did you get it?” she whispered to me.
    I told her about the elastic band I’d placed around my thigh so that I could hide the napkin under my skirt.
    “You’re crazy,” she said admiringly. “What if you’d been caught?”
    She couldn’t figure out when I could have found the opportunity to hide my napkin at one of our formal, silent, and endless dinners. I sat with Father on one side and Pauline on the other. My hands, since they held the glass and the knife, fork and spoon, were always being watched. I might spill something, or hold my knife in a barbaric way, or take bites that were too big, and these errors must be quickly and harshly corrected. I suspected that since there was little conversation, it gave Father and Pauline a way to pass the time.
    I reminded her that Mother had had a coughing fit at dinner the Thursday before last, and said that I had taken the opportunity when Father was pounding her on the back and Pauline was up getting water for her to drop my fork.
    “What are you two giggling about?” Father asked, not very kindly.
    We said nothing, trying not to look at one another. Sometimes that alone could set us off again. I felt that my face was pink and hot, and my lungs were full of unexploded laughter. Beside me I felt Helene shaking.
    “Well, compose yourselves,” Father said, and when he spoke in that tone all of the merriment inside of us died.
    A balding man in spectacles passing us checked the fob on his coat and announced to no one in particular, “They should be here in twenty-six minutes.”
    We passed a woman selling ices from a painted cart.
    “Would you girls like an ice?” Father asked. We were stunned. Normally we were not allowed to eat sweets, and certainly not from a street vendor.
    Pauline looked doubtful. “Really, Papa? Are you sure it’s all right?” Helene and I held our breath and squeezed the other’s hand tightly.
    “It’s Emilie’s birthday, after all,” he said. When he smiled, which wasn’t often, his ruddy face was briefly handsome. He gave the money to Pauline. “Don’t be shy. Go right up to her.”
    The woman called out to the crowd: “Hurry! Get an ice before they melt! It’s getting warmer by the minute!”
    We stood in line in back of a woman carrying a green parrot in a wire cage and watched the ice woman shaving ice for the customers ahead of us. Her arms were very tanned and she wore a red apron embroidered with fruit: lemons and pears and pineapples.
    Off to the side, a little girl in a white dress and expensive boots was screaming. Though she looked to be about ten, I noted with envy that her parasol was made of pink lace and that the embroidery on her dress was like nothing I’d ever seen. I think it was her clothes that made me watch her so carefully. That, and the scene she was making. I’d never seen a little girl throw a fit in public. No one I knew would have dared.
    “Adele,” a man said, “you know we don’t eat things sold on the street.” He was her father; he was large and lumpy and had a dark mustache. This only made her scream louder. Helene and I exchanged looks.
    Her father was embarrassed. Next to him, her stylishly dressed mother tapped her foot.
    “Shame on you!” her father said. “People will think you don’t love the emperor.”
    “I hate the emperor,” the little girl said. “I hate the emperor.” She said it a little louder this time. The people next to them pretended not to listen.
    “I hate the emperor,” she shouted. Her mother took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes for a long