"Kate Wilhelm - Hounds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

twice a week. And the lessons: piano, ballet, scuba, sailing. The clubs. The marina where they left the
ketch. She thought of her dressmaker and her hairdresser, and his tailor, and the special shoes for
Annamarie, and the kennel fees when they went away for the weekend and had to leave the three toy
poodles. She thought of two thousand dollars worth of braces for Juliette in another two years.

She thought about the others it had happened to. Out of six close friends only one, Burdorf, had another
job, advisor to an ad agency. But Burdorf had an in with them; his wife's father owned it.

Rose Ellen tried to stop thinking of the others who had been laid off. But Martin was different, she
thought again. Really different. He had so many degrees, for one thing. She shook her head. That didn't
matter. It hadn't mattered for any of the others.

She thought about being without him. She and the children without him. She shivered and hugged herself
hard. She could go to work. She hadn't because neither of them had wanted her to before. But she
could. She could teach, actually, easier than Martin could. He didn't have any of the education courses
that were required now. So, she pursued it further, she would teach, at about seven thousand a year,
and Martin would have to pay, oh, say four hundred a month... And if he didn't, or couldn't? If he was
on a farm somewhere without any money at all? Seven thousand. Braces, two thousand. House, two
thousand. Some extras, not many, but some, like a car. In another year Annamarie would be driving,
and junior insurance, and then Jeffrey would be wanting a car....

More important, they wouldn't mind her. She knew it. Martin could control them with a word, a glower.
She was easy and soft with them. It had always been impossible to tell them no, to tell them she wouldn't
take them here or there, do this or that for them. They'd run all over her, she knew.

****

Martin bought a farm in May and they moved as soon as school was out. The farm was twelve acres,
with a small orchard and a deep well and barn. The house was modern and good, and the children,
surprisingly, accepted the move unquestioningly and even liked it all. They held a family council the day
after moving into the house and took a vote on whether to buy a pool table for the basement rec room,
or a horse. It would be the only luxury they could afford for a long time. Only Rose Ellen voted for the
pool table.

Martin had to take three courses at the university in the fall semester, then he would teach, starting in
mid-term, not his own field of mathematics, because they had a very good teacher already, he was told,
but if he could brush up on high school general science....

Rose Ellen signed up as a substitute teacher for the fall semester. The school was only a mile and a half
from their house, she could walk there when the weather was pleasant.

"It's going to be all right, honey," Martin said one night in early September. Everyone had started school,
the whole move to the country had been so without trauma that it was suspicious. Rose Ellen nodded,
staring at him. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Dirt on my face?"

"No. It's strange how much you looked like my father there for a moment. A passing expression, there
and gone so fast that I probably imagined it."

"Your father?"
She picked up the magazine she had been looking at. "Yes. I told you I couldn't remember him because