While We're Far Apart Read Free Page B

need some more time to get used to the idea. How about if we come over on Friday night so we can talk some more?”
    “Sure! I could make dinner for you and – ”
    “That’s not necessary. We’ll come by after supper. And if Ma hasn’t changed her mind by then . . . well, I may have to take you up on your offer.”
    “That’s okay, Eddie, honest it is. I really meant it when I said I’d take care of them for you.”
    “It’s just that I was so sure Ma would help me out, and so I went ahead and signed up for the army, and now . . .”
    “It’ll all work out, you’ll see.”
    Penny walked with them to the corner and waited with them until the bus came. Then she hurried home to her half of the duplex to tell her parents the news. They were sitting in their usual chairs in the gloomy front room, listening to a radio program with the curtains drawn. They always kept the curtains closed even in the daytime to make sure that strangers couldn’t look inside – not that there was much to see. Penny waited to speak until an advertisement for Lux soap came on. Her father hated it when she interrupted his programs.
    “Hey, guess what? I was over next door, talking to Eddie Shaffer, and – ”
    “You shouldn’t hang around over there so much,” Mother said. “You’ll make a nuisance of yourself. Why can’t you stay home where you belong?”
    “Mrs. Shaffer doesn’t mind. Anyway, Eddie just signed up for the army like his brothers did, and he asked his mother to watch his two kids for him. His mother doesn’t think she can take care of them, so I told Eddie that I’d be glad to baby-sit for them while he’s away.”
    “You did what?” Mother stared at Penny as if she had just told her she’d robbed a bank. Penny had seen other mothers gaze at their children with love brimming in their eyes, and she wished, just once, that her mother would look at her that way. Her parents had been old when she was born, and she wondered if they had resented being burdened with a baby at such a late age, especially after they’d already raised a daughter.
    “I told Eddie that I would watch his kids – ”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t know the first thing about raising children. Besides, I’m sure he can get a hardship exemption since his children don’t have a mother.”
    “Eddie didn’t get drafted; he volunteered to go.” Penny understood exactly how he felt. She longed to start a new life in a new place, too, but what could she do? She didn’t make enough money at the bus company to afford an apartment of her own. And she didn’t have any friends who would share a place with her. If she had become a nurse after high school like she’d wanted to, she could have afforded her own place, but Mother had said she wasn’t smart enough to go to nursing school. “You need good grades to be a nurse and your grades are only average.”
    Penny knew she was ordinary and average. Eddie’s first wife, Rachel, had been pretty and smart and full of life. She had beautiful chestnut-colored hair and the tiniest waist that Penny had ever seen. Eddie could probably wrap his big, strong hands right around her waist with his fingers touching. No wonder he had loved her.
    “You should have seen how grateful Eddie was when I said I would help him out.”
    “In the first place,” her father said, joining the conversation, “I think it’s a terrible idea for him to leave his children. If anything happens to him, they’ll have nobody.”
    “They’ll have me. I’ll love them and take care of them.”
    “And in the second place, what business is it of yours to stick your nose into this? Huh?”
    “You don’t know the first thing about running your own home or taking care of children,” Mother added. “What if something happened to one of them and they got sick? You wouldn’t have any idea what to do.”
    “And what about your job?” Father said. “You can’t walk to work from where he lives, you