Too Much Too Soon Read Free Page B

have to grub at some filthy job, you’ll be at university. Joscelyn can go to a decent school where everyone isn’t Chinese or Italian. Daddy won’t drink so much—”
    “Crystal!” Honora’s whisper trembled with intensity.
    Crystal, glancing at the chauffeur, nodded, and said no more.
    The car had left the fine homes behind. As they glided up Lombard Street between drab apartment buildings toward the steep hill topped by the gray, upraised finger of Coit Tower, Honora bent forward to tap the separating pane of glass. “This is our number,” she called politely.
    The big sedan braked, passing a nearly invisible entry, a narrow arch that led below a block of flats. The brilliant afternoon sunlight exposed the leprous flaking of gray Navy-surplus paint.
    A third-story window was flung open, and a man leaned on the window ledge, his thinning brown hair blowing around his long, pale features, his unknotted old school tie flapping.
    “Oh, God, look at Daddy,” Crystal whispered.
    “You two deserve a good hiding!” Langley Sylvander shouted. “Where in the devil have you been, all tarted up?”
    “He’s really blotto,” Crystal muttered.
    Honora, not waiting for the chauffeur to open the door, jumped from the car with a mumbled thank you. Crystal was right after her.
    They dashed through the dark, narrow tunnel with its line of mailboxes, emerging in a sloping, cracked cement courtyard. Sheets and clothes billowed overhead on lines crisscrossing between two barrackslike frame structures.
    They raced up three flights of exterior steps. Before Honora could use her key, the door swung open and Langley blocked their way.
    The upper part of his face was strong and handsome, with a broad brow and deep-set eyes nearly as vivid a blue as Crystal’s. With his muscles loosened by drinking, however, the weakness of his chin and the self-indulgent petulance of his full, well-chiseled mouth showed.
    “I won’t have the pair of you getting into trouble,” he bawled.
    “Daddy, please let us in,” Honora said. “We can explain it all.”
    “What were you doing, parading around in that gaudy American motorcar?”
    Crystal raised her chin. “It belongs to Uncle Gideon.”
    “That common upstart! What were you doing with
him?
”
    “You told us to go to his house.”
    Langley gave her a look of surprise. “I did? Ahh yes, that was to offer your condolences on your aunt’s death. Not to use his big, vulgar possessions!” His light-timbred voice had taken on resonance.
    Honora pushed him inside and Crystal yanked the front door shut.
    They were in a very narrow corridor. The door to their left opened to a small bedroom crowded by a Queen Anne-style double bed and a high-legged nightstand on which stood a glass and a whiskey bottle.
    “Where’s my motherless babe? Is she out bagging for coins? Joscelyn.
Joss.
”
    “Isn’t she in our room?” Honora asked, worried.
    “Joss-e-lynnn!” bawled Langley.
    The door to their right opened. A short, thin child wearing an English schoolgirl’s tunic stood clutching a book to her skinny chest. Her mousy brown hair was skinned back from her narrow face into one long braid—in England the girls had called it a plait—her pale blue eyes appeared watery behind thick lensed glasses, her upper teeth bucked out. Joscelyn Sylvander, a remarkably homely child, was an unlikely postscript to the handsome Sylvander family.
    “What’s all the shouting about?” she asked with purposeful ignorance. “Is anything wrong?”
    “As if you didn’t know,” Crystal interjected—she was not too old to bicker with her little sister.
    “If I call, you’re to answer,” Langley shouted.
    “Oh, when you’re inebriated you’re a hopeless case,” Joscelyn cried.
    “You’re being cheeky, miss.”
    Joscelyn barged back into the room, the brown-painted, plywood walls shivering as she slammed the door.
    “These scenes!” Crystal stalked down the slit into the square room that served as