The Fourth Child by Jessica Winter (best classic novels TXT) 📕

discover them there. “Also, I’m—I’m only a freshman? It feels weird to play the mom.”

“Weird how?”

“Not believable. I won’t look like her.”

Mr. Smith frowned and shook his head. “That’s up to you. The audience wants to be told what to see. They give you their consentwhen they buy a ticket.”

Lauren nodded and stared at the carpet. “So . . . um . . .”

“Were you hoping to play Ann, perhaps?” he asked. Ann, the would-be bride of the dead son. After he dies, Ann falls in lovewith his surviving brother, much to the distress of Kate the matriarch. “What’s the first thing anyone in the play says aboutAnn?” Mr. Smith asked. “Do you remember?”

“No . . . that Ann’s boyfriend died in the war . . .” Lauren murmured.

“That she’s beautiful,” Mr. Smith said. “Before we know her name, she’s the beautiful girl. Well, who wouldn’t want to play the beautiful girl? Beloved by all, widowed before she could become a bride, thwarted bytragedy, bearing up despite everything . . .”

Mr. Smith nodded expectantly, waiting for Lauren to pick up the thread, raising his eyebrows above his glasses. Lauren sensed that he was saying something else without saying it, or that he wanted her to say it, whatever it was, and she would only be able to figure it out later. President Woodrow Wilson was sneering at her from behind his pipe, and AP American History students were filing into class.

“Listen, any pretty girl can play Ann,” Mr. Smith said, gathering up his things and standing up. “There are very few actresses,young actresses, who can play Kate. You are one of them.”

“I don’t have to do the play if I don’t want to,” Lauren said to the corner of the desk.

“How does your friend Paula feel about the whole thing?” Mr. Smith asked.

People already thought of Lauren and Paula as a pair. Paula was assigned to be property mistress. “She told me she’s not evenjealous,” Lauren said, looking up. They both smiled like they were finally sharing something.

“And are there people in your family who object?” Mr. Smith asked.

Mr. Koslowski, the AP American History teacher with the comb-over, was standing beside Mr. Smith. He looked at his watch,looked up at the clock on the wall, sighed.

“My mom is super religious,” Lauren said, frowning on one side, glancing back at the AP American History students to see whomight be listening, “but no, I doubt she cares one way or the other.”

“She’s Catholic?” he asked. Lauren nodded. “Ah, my people,” he said. “So full of remorse, so excited to do things to feelremorseful about.”

“She’s only Catholic for herself,” Lauren said. “She doesn’t make me go to church or anything.”

Mr. Koslowski half placed, half tossed his things onto the front desk and started writing on the blackboard, hitting the chalkagainst the slate with extra dismissive force. Mr. Smith, still standing beside the desk, feigned that he didn’t notice.

“Well, I’m glad we talked,” he said. “An actress should get down and dirty and fight with her character and argue with her playwright. I admire that in you, Lauren.”

Lauren tucked her chin against her chest, her hair falling in her face.

“Okay, you are now in physical pain due to this conversation, so score a hundred points for me,” Mr. Smith said. Lauren laughed weakly and stood up straighter.“But just do me this favor,” he said. “Before you decide—”

“I already decided—”

“Before you do that, ponder what Arthur Miller says about Kate in the stage directions. He calls her ‘a woman of uncontrolled impulses,and an overwhelming capacity for love.’”

“Not impulses—uncontrolled inspirations,” Lauren corrected him. She felt both pride and irritation with herself for pointing out his error.

“See, you know her better than I do,” Mr. Smith replied, bowing in a joking way to Mr. Koslowski, who was now scowling atthe two of them. A few students behind Lauren tittered.

“I need to start my class now,” Mr. Koslowski said.

“Just trying to embrace some of that old open-plan spirit, Koslowski,” Mr. Smith said. He danced his hands in semicircles,like a pitchman on a late-night infomercial. “Overlapping conversations, cross-disciplinary collaboration, hybrid vigor.”

Lauren was inching away as Mr. Smith turned back to her, gathering up his things from the desk. “‘A woman of uncontrolledinspirations,’ right,” he said, starting to walk alongside her. “Think about what an uncontrolled inspiration might look like.And think about the people in your life whom you could describe in the same way. We can’t condemn anyone with that much inspirationand that much love to give. Even if they drive us crazy.”

 

Right before everything changed, during those first weeks of high school, there were signs at home of what was to come. Stacksof paperwork left on the kitchen counter in the morning, then silently whisked away. A pamphlet titled Adoption: The Ultimate Journey of Faith, on top of the refrigerator: Lauren accidentally swept it to the floor when pawing for a banana. Mom’s general state of distraction, her spaciness, was nothing new, but now it was a single, distant object that seemed tohold her.

Mom was driving her home from swim practice in their wood-sided station wagon. The Chappaquiddick, Dad called it, becausehe said it was the same model some drugged-out blond newscaster had drowned in, “just like a Kennedy girl.” The dragon wagon,Sean and PJ called it, for reasons lost to time. Past sunset, mottled lights fell on the hood and dashboard, painting geometricpatterns on the backs of Lauren’s hands. Whenever Sean and PJ weren’t in the car, Mom padded out these commutes with somenonessential errand, or a drive through a neighborhood they hadn’t seen in a while. Lauren liked the serene pointlessnessof these detours. She could have walked or biked home or picked up a ride from a teammate, but here with Mom there was a privacyin the dark, a privacy-with-another she otherwise could find only with Paula. A key to feeling alone-yet-together was thatthey couldn’t look directly at each other: Mom’s voice trailing off in concentration as she made a left-hand turn againstfour lanes of Transit Road traffic; Lauren watching Mom’s hands on the steering wheel and the stick shift, her