tailieunhanh - Reading comprehension success part 18

Tham khảo tài liệu 'reading comprehension success part 18', ngoại ngữ, kỹ năng đọc tiếng anh phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | POSTTEST The Weekly Visit short story excerpt The requisite visit happened typically on sunny Saturdays when my child spirits were at their highest and could be most diminished by the cramped interior of her house. My mother accustomed to the bright spacious farmhouse that was once Grandma s seemed no less susceptible to the gloom. She would set her jaw as Grandma described the many ailments attendant on age and would check her watch an hour being the minimum she expected herself to withstand. Her barely contained impatience and my grandmother s crippling age radiated out around me. We were the women of the Carlson clan each throbbing with agitation like concentric blinking circles on a radar screen. I would sit at the white and red metal table with the pull-out leaves and built-in silverware drawer cracking almonds. This was the one good thing at Grandma s house the almonds which she kept in a green Depression glass bowl. I would lift the lid carefully and try to set it down on the metal table quietly then attempt to crack the nuts without scattering the shell crumbs. It was not good to draw attention to myself at Grandma Carlson s. Sounding angry she would call to me in her croupy drawl. When I failed to understand her she would reach out to me with her palsied slick wrinkled hand and shout Here She would be offering some of her horehound candy which tasted like a cross between butterscotch and bitter sticks. There was this lamentable air in the dim house with its itchy mohair furniture and its dark colors an awareness Grandma s underlying the mentholatum that her age scared her grandkids. I would yearn during the dutiful visit to get outside into the yard where Grandma had transplanted a few flowers when she moved from the farm. But even the yard with its overgrown hedges and rusted metal lawn chairs seemed dreary. When I came back inside light and air bursting in with me Grandma her hair up in a gray bun would rock a little and smile. I would lean then against