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| My private belief is that she couldn't face the... |
06-11-2010 |
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| My private belief is that she couldn't face the boredomAt any rate that's what Augusta and my daughters-in-law thinkAnd I don't know that I altogether blame herOlenski's a finished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer than it is in Fifth AvenueNot that the family would admit that: they think Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown inAnd poor Ellen, of course, has no idea of going back to her husbandShe held out as firmly as ever against thatSo she's to settle down in Paris with that fool MedoraWell, Paris is Paris; and you can keep a carriage there on next to nothingBut she was as gay as a bird, and I shall miss her Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down her puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom
"All I ask is," she concluded, "that they shouldn't bother me any moreI must really be allowed to digest my gruel And she twinkled a little wistfully at Archer
It was that evening, on his return home, that May announced her intention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousinMadame Olenska's name had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight to new omega watches Washington; and Archer looked at his wife with surprise
"A dinner?why?" he interrogated"But you like Ellen?I thought you'd be pleased
"It's awfully nice?your putting it in that wayBut I really don't see?"
"I mean to do it, Newland," she said, quietly rising and going to her desk"Here are the invitations all writtenMother helped me?she agrees that we ought to She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and Archer suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family
"Oh, all right," he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of guests that she had put in his hand
When he entered the drawing-room before dinner May was stooping over the fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed setting of immaculate tiles
The tall lamps were all lit, and Mrvan der Luyden's orchids had been conspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and knobby silverNewland Archer's drawing-room was generally thought a great successA gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the primulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to the bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze chanel 2.55 bag reduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale brocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered with silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames; and tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the palms
"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May, rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of pardonable prideThe brass tongs which she had propped against the side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's answer; and before he could restore them Mrvan der Luyden were announced
The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der Luydens liked to dine punctuallyThe room was nearly full, and Archer was engaged in showing to MrsSelfridge Merry a small highly-varnished Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which MrWelland had given May for Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side
She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser and heavier than everPerhaps that, or the fact that she had wound several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him roxanne mulberry suddenly of the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children's parties, when Medora Manson had first brought her to New York
The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had never loved it as he did at that minuteTheir hands met, and he thought he heard her say: "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the Russia?"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and after an interval May's voice: "Newland! Dinner's been announcedWon't you please take Ellen in?"
Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-roomAll the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should have to follow her?
It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a "foreign visitor" that Mrsvan der Luyden could suffer the diminution of chanel jewelry necklace being placed on her host's leftThe fact of Madame Olenska's "foreignness" could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell tribute; and Mrsvan der Luyden accepted her displacement with an affability which left no doubt as to her approvalThere were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribeThere was nothing on earth that the Wellands and Mingotts would not have done to proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Olenska now that her passage for Europe was engaged; and Archer, at the head of his table, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her popularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her past countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approvalvan der Luyden shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her nearest approach to cordiality, and Mrvan der Luyden, from his seat at May's right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify all the carnations he had sent from gucci watches for women Skuytercliff |
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| No wonder his tremendous effort to hide his... |
06-10-2010 |
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| No wonder his tremendous effort to hide his agitation was thwarted momentarily by uncontrollable rage, and sharply he said to her--as though he were not joined to her maniacally uncompromising mission in the most unimaginable way, as though it could matter to him that she enjoyed thinking the worst of him--"You have no idea what you're talking about! American firms make gloves in the Philippines and Hong Kong and Taiwan and India and Pakistan and all over the place--but not mine! I own two factoriesOne of my factories you visited in NewarkYou saw how unhappy my employees wereThat's why they've worked for us for forty years, because they're exploited so miserablyThe factory in Puerto Rico employs two hundred and sixty people, Miss Cohen--people we have trained, trained from scratch, people we trust, people who before we came to Ponce had barely enough work to go aroundWe furnish employment tiffany co earrings where there was a shortage of employment, we have taught needle skills to Caribbean people who had few if any of these skillsYou know nothing about anything--you didn't even know what a factory was till I showed you one!"
"I know what a plantation is, MrI know what it means to run a plantationYou take good care of your niggersIt's called paternal capitalismYou own 'em, you sleep with 'em, and when you're finished with 'em you toss 'em outLynch 'em only when necessaryUse them for your sport and use them for your profit--"
"Please, I haven't two minutes' interest in childish clichesYou don't know what a factory is, you don't know what manufacturing is, you don't know what capital is, you don't know what labor is, you haven't the faintest idea what it is to be employed or what it is to be unemployedYou have no idea what work isYou've never held a job in your life, and if you even cared to omega automatic seamaster find one, you wouldn't last a single day, not as a worker, not as a manager, not as an ownerI want you to tell me where my daughter isThat is all I want to hear from youShe needs help, she needs serious help, not ridiculous clichesI want you to tell me where I can find her!"
"Merry never wants to see you again
"You don't know anything about Merry's mother
"Lady Dawn? Lady Dawn of the Manor? I know all there is to know about Lady DawnSo ashamed of her class origins she has to make her daughter into a debutante
"Merry shoveled cowshit from the time she was sixYou don't know what you're talking aboutMerry was in the 4-H ClubThe daughter of the beauty queen and the cap-135 tain of the football team--what kind of nightmare is that for a girl with a soul? The little shirtwaist dresses, the little shoes, the little this and the little thatAlways playing with her hairYou think she wanted to tiffany canada fix Merry's hair because she loved her and the way she looked or because she was disgusted with her, disgusted she couldn't have a baby beauty queen that could grow up in her own image to become Miss Rimrock? Merry has to have dancing lessonsMerry has to have tennis lessonsI'm surprised she didn't get a nose job
"You don't know what you are talking about
"Why do you think Merry had the hots for Audrey Hepburn? Because she thought that was the best chance she had with that vain little mother of hersHard to believe you could fit so much vanity into that cutesy figureOh, but it does, it fits, all rightJust doesn't leave much room for Merry, does it?"
"You don't know what you're saying
"No imagination for somebody who isn't beautiful and lovable and desirableThe frivolous, trivial beauty-queen mentality and no imagination for her own daughter'I don't want to see anything messy, I don't chanel shopping bags want to see anything dark' But the world isn't like that, Dawnie dear--it is messy, it is darkIt's hideous!"
"Merry's mother works a farm all dayShe works with animals all day, she works with farm machinery all day, she works from six aShe works a farm like a fucking upper-class--"
"You don't know anything about any of thisWhere is my daughter? Where is she? The conversation is pointlessWhere is Merry?"
"You don't remember the 'Now You Are a Woman Party'? To celebrate her first menstruation
"We're not talking about any partyWhat party?"
"We're talking about the humiliation of a daughter by her beauty-queen motherWe're talking about a mother who completely colonized her daughter's self-imageWe're talking about a mother who didn't have an inch of feeling for her daughter--who has about as much depth as those gloves you makeA whole family and all you really fucking care about is prada fairy skin |
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| "Yes, yes, whatever you say
His father,... |
06-09-2010 |
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"Yes, yes, whatever you say
His father, continuing to watch the television set--and after having miraculously contained himself for ten full days--said to him, "No news
"No news," the Swede replied
"O-kay," his father said, feigning fatalism, "o-kay--if that's the way it is, that's the way it is," and went back to watching TV
"Do you still think she's in Canada, Seymour?" his mother asked
"I never thought she was in Canada
"But that's where the boys went
"Look, why don't we save this discussion? There's nothing wrong with asking questions but Dawn will be in and out--"
"I'm sorry, you're right," his mother replied
"Not that louis vuitton duffle bag the situation has changed, MotherEverything is exactly the same"Darling, one questionIf she gave herself up now, what would happen? Your father says--"
"Why are you bothering him with that?" his father said"He told you about DawnLearn to control yourself
"Me control myself?"
"Mother, you must stop thinking these thoughtsShe may never want to see us again
"Why?" his father erupted"Of course she wants to see us againThis I refuse to believe!"
"Now who's controlling himself?" his mother asked
"Of course she wants to see us againThe problem is she can't
"Lou dear," his mother said, "there are children, even in ordinary families, who grow chloe bags paddington up and go away and that's the end of it
"But not at sixteenFor Christ's sake, not under these circumstancesWhat are you talking about 'ordinary' families? We are an ordinary familyThis is a child who needs helpThis is a child who is in trouble and we are not a family who walks out on a child in trouble!"
"She's twenty years old, Dad
"Twenty-one," his mother said, "last January
"Well, she's not a child," the Swede told them"All I'm saying is that you must not set yourself up for disappointment, neither of you
"Well, I don't," his father said"I have more sense than thatI assure you I don't
"Well, you mustn'tI seriously doubt that we will black chanel handbags ever see her again
The only thing worse than their never seeing her again would be their seeing her as he had left her on the floor of that roomOver these last few years, he had been moving them in the direction, if not of total resignation, of adaptation, of a realistic appraisal of the futureHow could he now tell them what had happened to Merry, find words to describe it to them that would not destroy them? They haven't the faintest picture in their mind of what they'd see if they were to see herWhy does anyone have to know? What is so indispensable about any of them knowing?
"You got reason to say that, son, that we'll never see chanel ceramic watches her?"
"The five yearsThe time that's gone byThat's reason enough
"Seymour, sometimes I'm walking on the street, and I'm behind someone, a girl who's walking in front of me, and if she's tall--"
He took his mother's hands in his"You think it's Merry
"That happens to all of us
"And every time the phone rings," she said
"I tell her," his father said, "that she wouldn't do it with a phone call anyway
"And why not?" she said to her husband"Why not phone us? That's the safest thing she could possibly do, to phone us
"Ma, none of this speculation means anythingWhy not try to keep it to a minimum tonight? I know you can't help having these tiffany silver jewelry thoughts |
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| Archer, who was fond of coining her social... |
06-08-2010 |
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| Archer, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms, had once said: "We all have our pet common people?" and though the phrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in many an exclusive bosomBut the Beauforts were not exactly common; some people said they were even worseBeaufort belonged indeed to one of America's most honoured families; she had been the lovely Regina Dallas (of the South Carolina branch), a penniless beauty introduced to New York society by her cousin, the imprudent Medora Manson, who was always doing the wrong thing from the right motiveWhen one was related to the Mansons and the Rushworths one had a "droit de cite" (as MrSillerton Jackson, who had frequented the Tuileries, called it) in New York society; but did one not forfeit it in marrying Julius Beaufort?
The question was: who was Beaufort? He passed for an Englishman, was agreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and wittyHe had come to America with letters of recommendation from old MrsManson Mingott's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself an important position in the world of affairs; but his habits were dissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious; and when Medora Manson announced her cousin's engagement to him it was felt to be one more act of folly in poor Medora's long record of imprudences
But folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two years after young MrsBeaufort's marriage it was admitted that she had the most distinguished house in New YorkNo one knew exactly how the miracle was accomplishedShe was indolent, passive, the caustic even called her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing younger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she chanel vintage jewelry throned in MrBeaufort's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there without lifting her jewelled little fingerThe knowing people said it was Beaufort himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new dishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the dinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the after-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her friendsIf he did, these domestic activities were privately performed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless and hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the detachment of an invited guest, and saying: "My wife's gloxinias are a marvel, aren't they? I believe she gets them out from KewBeaufort's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried things offIt was all very well to whisper that he had been "helped" to leave England by the international banking-house in which he had been employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the rest?though New York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral standard?he carried everything before him, and all New York into his drawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they were "going to the Beauforts'" with the same tone of security as if they had said they were going to MrsManson Mingott's, and with the added satisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks and vintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and warmed-up croquettes from PhiladelphiaBeaufort, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the Jewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third act, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared, New York knew that meant that half an chanel classic bag hour later the ball would begin
The Beaufort house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to foreigners, especially on the night of the annual ballThe Beauforts had been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet carpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under their own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the ball-room chairsThey had also inaugurated the custom of letting the ladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to the hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the gas-burner; Beaufort was understood to have said that he supposed all his wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly coiffees when they left home
Then the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that, instead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the Chiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed drawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing from afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry, and beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and tree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold bamboo
Newland Archer, as became a young man of his position, strolled in somewhat lateHe had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged footmen (the stockings were one of Beaufort's few fatuities), had dawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished with Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on their dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom MrsBeaufort was receiving on the threshold of the crimson drawing-room
Archer was distinctly nervousHe had not gone back to his club after chanel ceramic watches the Opera (as the young bloods usually did), but, the night being fine, had walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the direction of the Beauforts' houseHe was definitely afraid that the Mingotts might be going too far; that, in fact, they might have Granny Mingott's orders to bring the Countess Olenska to the ball
From the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that would be; and, though he was more than ever determined to "see the thing through," he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his betrothed's cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera
Wandering on to the bouton d'or drawing-room (where Beaufort had had the audacity to hang "Love Victorious," the much-discussed nude of Bouguereau) Archer found MrsWelland and her daughter standing near the ball-room doorCouples were already gliding over the floor beyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on girlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes and ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the glitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glace gloves
Miss Welland, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the threshold, her lilies-of-the-valley in her hand (she carried no other bouquet), her face a little pale, her eyes burning with a candid excitementA group of young men and girls were gathered about her, and there was much hand-clasping, laughing and pleasantry on which MrsWelland, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified approvalIt was evident that Miss Welland was in the act of announcing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of parental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion
Archer paused a momentIt was at his express chanel necklace wish that the announcement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have wished to have his happiness knownTo proclaim it in the heat and noise of a crowded ball-room was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy which should belong to things nearest the heartHis joy was so deep that this blurring of the surface left its essence untouched; but he would have liked to keep the surface pure tooIt was something of a satisfaction to find that May Welland shared this feelingHer eyes fled to his beseechingly, and their look said: "Remember, we're doing this because it's right
No appeal could have found a more immediate response in Archer's breast; but he wished that the necessity of their action had been represented by some ideal reason, and not simply by poor Ellen OlenskaThe group about Miss Welland made way for him with significant smiles, and after taking his share of the felicitations he drew his betrothed into the middle of the ball-room floor and put his arm about her waist
"Now we shan't have to talk," he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as they floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube
She made no answerHer lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes remained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision"Dear," Archer whispered, pressing her to him: it was borne in on him that the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ball-room, had in them something grave and sacramentalWhat a new life it was going to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side!
The dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into the conservatory; and sitting behind a tall screen of tree-ferns and camellias Newland pressed her gloved hand to his lips
"You see I did as you asked me to," she bag chloe paddington sa |
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| "I shall be back by six, you know, dear: Papa... |
06-07-2010 |
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| "I shall be back by six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that?" and she was not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for her broughamThey had been looking for this horse for some time, and the suggestion was so acceptable that May glanced at her mother as if to say: "You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of us
The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in Archer's mind on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had first been mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were something clandestine in the plan, and discovery might prevent its executionHe had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance a runabout with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still do their eighteen miles on level roads; and at two o'clock, hastily deserting the luncheon-table, he sprang into the light carriage and drove off
The day was perfectA breeze from the north drove little puffs of white cloud across an ultramarine sky, with a bright sea running under itBellevue Avenue was empty at that hour, and after dropping the stable-lad at the corner of Mill Street Archer turned down the Old Beach Road and drove across Eastman's Beach
He had the feeling of unexplained excitement with which, on half-holidays at school, he used to white ceramic chanel watch start off into the unknownTaking his pair at an easy gait, he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which was not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o'clock; so that, after looking over the horse (and trying him if he seemed promising) he would still have four golden hours to dispose of
As soon as he heard of the Sillerton's party he had said to himself that the Marchioness Manson would certainly come to Newport with the Blenkers, and that Madame Olenska might again take the opportunity of spending the day with her grandmotherAt any rate, the Blenker habitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without indiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning itHe was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-houseThe longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgottenHe could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her voiceHe simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the rolex vintage women's watch way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty
When he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him that the horse was not what he wanted; nevertheless he took a turn behind it in order to prove to himself that he was not in a hurryBut at three o'clock he shook out the reins over the trotters and turned into the by-roads leading to PortsmouthThe wind had dropped and a faint haze on the horizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the turn of the tide; but all about him fields and woods were steeped in golden light
He drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields and groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply into the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some men at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of goldenrod and bramblesAt the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of the river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and maples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling from its clapboards
On the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in which the New Englander shelters his farming implements and visitors "hitch" their "teams Archer, jumping down, led his pair into the shed, and after tying them to a post turned toward the houseThe patch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left an cartier roadster replica overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled a ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white, surmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but continued to take ineffectual aim
Archer leaned for a while against the gateNo one was in sight, and not a sound came from the open windows of the house: a grizzled Newfoundland dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as the arrowless CupidIt was strange to think that this place of silence and decay was the home of the turbulent Blenkers; yet Archer was sure that he was not mistaken
For a long time he stood there, content to take in the scene, and gradually falling under its drowsy spell; but at length he roused himself to the sense of the passing timeShould he look his fill and then drive away? He stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the inside of the house, so that he might picture the room that Madame Olenska sat inThere was nothing to prevent his walking up to the door and ringing the bell; if, as he supposed, she was away with the rest of the party, he could easily give his name, and ask permission to go into the sitting-room to write a message
But instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward the box-gardenAs he entered it he caught sight of something bright-coloured in the summer-house, and presently made it out to be a pink parasolThe parasol drew him like a magnet: gucci silver bag he was sure it was hersHe went into the summer-house, and sitting down on the rickety seat picked up the silken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some rare wood that gave out an aromatic scentArcher lifted the handle to his lips
He heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat motionless, leaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands, and letting the rustle come nearer without lifting his eyesHe had always known that this must happen Archer!" exclaimed a loud young voice; and looking up he saw before him the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and blowsy, in bedraggled muslinA red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed to show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her half-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly
"Gracious?where did you drop from? I must have been sound asleep in the hammockEverybody else has gone to NewportDid you ring?" she incoherently enquired
Archer's confusion was greater than hers"I?no?that is, I was just going toI had to come up the island to see about a horse, and I drove over on a chance of finding MrsBlenker and your visitorsBut the house seemed empty?so I sat down to wait
Miss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with increasing interestMother's not here, or the Marchioness?or anybody but me Her glance became faintly reproachful"Didn't you know that Professor and gucci taske Mrs |
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| Watch 'em practicing up on the field after school... |
06-06-2010 |
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| Watch 'em practicing up on the field after school and then go home and beat offCocoa-colored pancake makeupYou notice something? The guys on the whole don't look too bad, a lot of them work out, but the girls, you knowno, a forty-fifth reunion is not the best place to come looking for ass
"True, true," said the other man, who spoke softly and seemed not to have found in the occasion quite the nostalgic license that Mendy had, "time has not been kind to the women
"You know who's dead? Bert and Utty," Mendy saidThank God I get the testYou get the test?"
"What test?" the other fellow asked"Shit, you don't get the test?"
"Skip," said Mendy, pulling me away from Ira, "Meisner doesn't get the test
Now Meisner was MrMeisner, Abe Meisner, a short, swarthy, heavyset man with stooped shoulders and a jutting head, proprietor of Meisner's Cleaners--"5 Hour Cleaning Service"--situated on Chancellor between the shoe repair shop, where the Italian radio station was always playing while you waited on the seat behind the swinging half-door for Ralph to fix your heels, and the beauty salon, Roline's, from which my mother once brought home the copy of Silver Screen where I read an article that stunned me called "George Raft Is a Lonely ManMeisner, a short, indestructible earthling like her husband, worked with him in the store and one year also sold war bonds and stamps with my mother in a booth right out on Chancellor AvenueAlan, their son, had gone through school with me, beginning with kindergarten, skipping the same grades I did all through grade schoolAlan Meisner and I used to be thrown into a room together by our teacher and, as though we were George SKaufman and Moss Hart, told to turn black chanel handbag something out whenever a play was needed at assembly for a national holidayFor a couple of seasons right after the war MrMeisner--through some miracle--got to be the dry cleaner for the Newark Bears, the Yankees' Triple A farm team, and one summer day, and a great day it was, I was enlisted by Alan to help him carry the Bears' freshly dry-cleaned away uniforms, via three buses, to the Ruppert Stadium clubhouse all the way down on Wilson AvenueJesus," I said, "you are your old man
"Who else's old man should I be?" he replied, and, taking my face between his hands, gave me a kiss"Al," Mendy said, "tell Skippy what you heard Schrimmer telling his wifeSchrimmer's got a new wife, SkipThree years ago he went to a psychiatristThe psychiatrist said to him, 'What do you think when I ask you to imagine your wife's body'
'I think I should slit my throat,' Schrim saidSo he divorces her and marries the shiksa secretaryAl, tell Skip what she said, the longer loksh
"She said to Schrim," said Alan, the two of us grinning as we clutched each other's diminished biceps, "she said, 'Why are they all Mutty and Utty and Dutty and Tutty? If his name is Charles, why is he called Tutty?'
'I shouldn't have brought you,' Schrim said to her'I knew I shouldn'tI can't explain it,' Schrim said to her, 'nobody canIt's beyond explanation'
And what was Alan now? Raised by a dry cleaner, worked after school for a dry cleaner, himself a dead ringer for a dry cleaner, he was a superior court judge in PasadenaIn his father's pocket-sized dry-cleaning shop there had been a rotogravure picture of FDR framed on the wall above the pressing machine, beside an autographed photo of Mayor Meyer EllensteinI remembered quilted chanel bags these photographs when Alan told me that he had twice been a member of Republican delegations to the presidential conventionWhen Mendy asked if Alan could get him tickets to the Rose Bowl, Alan Meisner, with whom I used to travel to Brooklyn to see Dodger Sunday doubleheaders the year that Robinson broke in, with whom I'd start out at eight aon a bus from our corner, take it downtown to Penn Station, switch to the tubes to New York, in New York switch to the subway to Brooklyn, all to get to Ebbets Field and eat our sandwiches from our lunch bags before batting practice began--Alan Meisner, who, once the ballgame got under way, drove everybody around us crazy with his vocally unmodulated play-by-57 play of both ends of the doubleheader--this same Alan Meisner took a pocket diary out of his jacket and carefully inscribed a note to himselfI saw what he'd written from over his shoulder: "R
Meaningless? Unspectacular? Nothing very enormous going on there? Well, what you make of it would depend on where you grew up and how life got opened up to youAlan Meisner could not be said to have risen out of nothing; however, remembering him as a little hick obliviously yapping away nonstop in his seat at Ebbets Field, remembering him delivering the dry cleaning through our streets late on a winter afternoon, hatless and in a snow-laden pea jacket, one could easily imagine him destined for something less than the Tournament of Roses
Only after strudel and coffee had capped off a chicken dinner that, what with barely anyone able to stay seated very long in one place to eat it, had required nearly all afternoon to get through; after the kids from Maple got up on the bandstand and sang the Maple Avenue balenciaga bag School song; after classmate upon classmate had taken the microphone to say "It's been a great life" or "I'm proud of all of you"; after people had just about finished tapping one another on the shoulder and falling into one another's arms; after the ten-member reunion committee stood on the dance floor and held hands while the one-man band played Bob Hope's theme song, "Thanks for the Memory," and we applauded in appreciation of all their hard work; after Marvin Lieb, whose father sold my father our Pontiac and offered each of us kids a big cigar to smoke whenever we came to get Marvin from the house, told me about his alimony miseries--"A guy takes a leak with more forethought than I gave to my two marriages"--and Julius Pincus, who'd always been the kindest kid and who now, because of tremors resulting from taking the cyclosporin essential to the long-term survival of his transplant, had had to give up his optometry practice, told me ruefully how he'd come by his new kidney--"If a little fourteen-year-old girl didn't die of a brain hemorrhage last October, I would be dead today"--and after Schrimmer's tall young wife had said to me, "You're the class writer, maybe you can explain itWhy are they all called Utty, Dutty, Mutty, and Tutty?"; only after I had shocked Shelly Minskoff, another Daredevil, with a nod of the head when he asked, "Is it true what you said at the mike, you don't have kids or anything like that?," only after Shelly had taken my hand in his and said, "Poor Skip," only then did I discover that Jerry Levov, having arrived late, was among us
I hadn't even thought to look for himI knew from the Swede that Jerry lived in Florida, but even more to the point, he'd omega deville watch always been such an isolated kid, so little engaged by anything other than his own abstruse interests, that it didn't seem likely he'd have any more desire now than he'd had then to endure the wisdom of his classmatesBut only minutes after Shelly Minskoff had bid me good-bye, Jerry came bounding over, a big man in a double-breasted blue blazer like my own, but with a chest like a large birdcage, and bald except for a ropelike strand of white hair draped across the crown of his skullHis body had really achieved a strange form: despite the majestic upper torso that had replaced the rolling-pin chest of the gawky boy, he locomoted himself on the same ladderlike legs that had made his the silliest gait in the school, legs no heavier or any shapelier than Olive Oyl's in the Popeye comic stripThe face I recognized immediately, from those afternoons when my own face was target for its focused animosity, when I used to see it weaving wildly above the Ping-Pong table, crimson with belligerence and lethal intention--yes, the core of that face I could never forget, long-limbed Jerry's knotted little face, the determined mask of the prowling beast that won't let you be until you're driven from your lair, the ferret face that declares, "Don't talk to me about compromise! I know nothing of compromise!" Now in that face was the obstinacy of a lifetime of smashing the ball back at the other guy's gulletI could imagine that Jerry had made himself important to people by means different from his brother's
"I didn't expect to see you here," Jerry said
"I didn't expect to see you
"I wouldn't have thought this was a big enough stage for you," he said, laughing"I was sure you'd find the sentimentality chanel jumbo flap repelle |
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| Not since Merry had disappeared had he felt... |
06-05-2010 |
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Not since Merry had disappeared had he felt anything like this loquaciousRight up to that morning, all he'd been wanting was to weep or to hide; but because there was Dawn to nurse and a business to tend to and his parents to prop up, because everybody else was paralyzed by disbelief and shattered to the core, neither inclination had as yet eroded the protective front he provided the family and presented to the worldBut now words were sweeping him on, buoying him up, his father's words released by the sight of this tiny girl studiously taking them downShe was nearly as small, he thought, as the kids from Merry's third-grade class, who'd been bused the thirty-eight miles from their rural schoolhouse one day back in the late fifties so that Merry's daddy could show them how he made gloves, show them especially Merry's magical spot, the laying-off table, where, at the end of the making process, the men shaped and pressed each and every glove by pulling it carefully down over steam-heated brass hands veneered in chromeThe hands were dangerously hot and they were shiny and they stuck straight ceramic chanel up from the table in a row, thin-looking as hands that had been flattened in a mangle and then amputated, beautifully amputated hands afloat in space like the souls of the deadAs a little girl, Merry was captivated by their enigma, called them "the pancake hands Merry as a little girl saying to her classmates, "You want to make five dollars a dozen," which was what glovemakers were always saying and what she'd been hearing since she was born--five dollars a dozen, that was what you shot for, regardlessMerry whispering to the teacher, "People cheating on piece rates is always a problemMy daddy had to fire one manHe was stealing time," and the Swede telling her, "Honey, let Daddy conduct the tour, okay?" Merry as a little girl reveling in the dazzling idea of stealing timeMerry flitting from floor to floor, so proud and proprietary, flaunting her familiarity with all the employees, unaware as yet of the desecration of dignity inherent to the ruthless exploitation of the worker by the profit-hungry boss who unjustly owns the means of production
No wonder he felt so untamed, craving to spill over chanel white j12 watch with talkMomentarily it was then again--nothing blown up, nothing ruinedAs a family they still flew the flight of the immigrant rocket, the upward, unbroken immigrant trajectory from slave-driven great-grandfather to self-driven grandfather to self-confident, accomplished, independent father to the highest high flier of them all, the fourth-generation child for whom America was to be heaven itselfNo wonder he couldn't shut upIt was impossible to shut upThe Swede was giving in to the ordinary human wish to live once again in the past--to spend a self-deluding, harmless few moments back in the wholesome striving of the past, when the family endured by a truth in no way grounded in abetting destruction but rather in eluding and outlasting destruction, overcom-122 ing its mysterious inroads by creating the Utopia of a rational existence
He heard her asking, "How many come in a shipment?"
"How many skins? A couple of thousand dozen skins
"A bale is how many?"
He liked finding that she was interested in every last detailYes, talking to this attentive student up from Wharton, he was suddenly chanel white watch able to like something as he had not been able to like anything, to bear anything, even to understand anything he'd come up against for four lifeless monthsHe'd felt himself instead to be perishing of everything"Oh, a hundred and twenty skins," he replied
She continued taking notes as she asked, "They come right to your shipping department?"
"They come to the tanneryThe tannery is a contractorWe buy the material and then we give it to them, and we give them the process to use and then they convert it into leather for usMy grandfather and my father worked in the tannery right here in NewarkSo did I, for six months, when I started in the businessEver been inside a tannery?"
"Not yet
"Well, you've got to go to a tannery if you're going to write about leatherI'll set that up for you if you'd like thatThey're primitive placesThe technology has improved things, but what you'll see isn't that different from what you would have seen hundreds of years agoSaid to be the oldest industry of which relics have been found anywhereSix-thousand-year-old relics of tanning found somewhere--Turkey, I chanel classic bag believeFirst clothing was just skins that were tanned by smoking themI told you it was an interesting subject once you get into itMy father is the leather scholarHe's who you should be talking to, but he's living in Florida nowStart my father off about gloves and he'll talk for two days runningThat's typical, by the wayGlovemen love the trade and everything about itTell me, have you ever seen anything manufactured, Miss Cohen?"
"I can't say I have
"Never seen anything made?"
"Saw my mother make a cake when I was a kidShe had made him laughA feisty innocent, eager to learnHis daughter was easily a foot taller than Rita Cohen, fair where she was dark, but otherwise Rita Cohen, homely little thing though she was, had begun to remind him of Merry before her repugnance set in and she began to become their enemyThe good-natured intelligence that would just waft out of her and into the house when she came home from school overbrimming with what she'd learned in classHow she remembered everythingEverything neatly taken down in her notebook and memorized overnight
"I'll tell you what we're going louis cartier to |
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| He knew she had come to inform him that his... |
06-04-2010 |
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| He knew she had come to inform him that his daughter was deadThat was what was written on the paperIt was a note from Rita Cohen"Sir," she said, "can you tell me where the Salvation Army is?"
"Is there one?" he askedShe did not look as though she thought there wasBut she replied, "I believe so, yeah She held up the piece of paperDo you know where it is, sir?" Anything beginning with sir or ending with sir usually means "I want money," and so he reached into his pocket, passed her some bills, and she lurched away, disappeared down into the underpass on those ill-fitting shoes, and after that he saw no one
He waited for forty more minutes and would have waited another forty, have waited there until it grew dark, might well have remained long after that, a man in a seven-hundred-dollar custom-made suit with his back against a lamppost like a vagrant in threadbare rags, a man who from all appearances had meetings to attend and business to transact and social obligations to fulfill, selfconsciously loitering on a blighted street near the railroad station, maybe a rich out-of-towner under the mistaken impression that he'd landed in the red-light district, pretending to stare aimlessly into space while his head is full of secrets and his heart is (as it was) thumping awayOn the chance that, horribly enough, Rita Cohen was telling the truth and always had been, he might well have stood vigil there all night long and cartier pasha watch through to the next morning, thinking to catch Merry coming to workBut, mercifully, if that is the word, in only forty minutes she appeared, a figure tall and female but one he might never have taken for his daughter had he not been told to look for her there
Again imagination had failed himHe felt as though he had no control over muscles that he'd mastered at the age of two--he wouldn't have been surprised if everything, not excluding his blood, had come gushing from him onto the pavementThis was too much to battle withThis was too much to bring home to Dawn's new faceNot even electrically operated skylights over a modern kitchen whose heart was a state-of-the-art cooking island would enable her to find her way back from thisEighteen hundred nights at the mercy of a murderer's father's imagination still hadn't prepared him for her incognitoIt had not required this to elude the FBIHow she got to this was too horrible for him to contemplateBut to run from his own child? In fear? There was her soul to cherish"Life!" he instructed himself"I cannot let her go! Our life!" And by then Merry had seen him, and had it even been possible for him, he did not fall to pieces and run, because it was now too late to run
And to what would he have run anyway? To that Swede who did it all so effortlessly? To that Swede blessedly oblivious of himself and his thoughts? To the Swede Levov who once upon a timeHe might as well turn for gold chanel earrings help to that hefty black woman with the scarred face, expect to find himself by asking her, "Madam, do you know where it is that I am? Have you any idea where I went?"
Merry had seen himHow could she miss him? How could she have missed him even on a street where there was life and not death, where there was a throng of the striving and the harried and the driven and the decisive and not this malignant void? There was her handsome, utterly recognizable six-foot-three father, the handsomest father a girl could haveShe raced across the street, this frightful creature, and like the carefree child he used to enjoy envisioning back when he was himself a carefree child--the girl running from her swing outside the stone house--she threw herself upon his chest, her arms encircling his neckFrom beneath the veil she wore across the lower half of her face--obscuring her mouth and her chin, a sheer veil that was the ragged foot off an old nylon stocking--she said to the man she had come to detest, "Daddy! Daddy!" faultlessly, just like any other child, and looking like a person whose tragedy was that she'd never been anyone's child
They are crying intensely, the dependable father whose center is the source of all order, who could not overlook or sanction the smallest sign of chaos--for whom keeping chaos far at bay had been intuition's chosen path to certainty, the rigorous daily given of life--and the daughter who is necklace pearl chanel chaos itselfs, 'he had become a JainHer father didn't know what that meant until, in her unhampered, chantlike speech--the unimpeded speech with which she would have spoken at home had she ever been able to master a stutter while living within her parents' safekeeping--she patiently told himThe Jains were a relatively small Indian religious sect--that he could accept as factBut whether Merry's practices were typical or of her own devising he could not be certain, even if she contended that every last thing she now did was an expression of religious beliefShe wore the veil to do no harm to the microscopic organisms that dwell in the air we breatheShe did not bathe because she revered all life, including the verminShe did not wash, she said, so as "to do no harm to the water She did not walk about after dark, even in her own room, for fear of crushing some living object beneath her feetThere are souls, she explained, imprisoned in every form of matter; the lower the form of life, the greater is the pain to the soul imprisoned thereThe only way ever to become free of matter and to arrive at what she described as "self-sufficient bliss for all eternity" was to become what she reverentially called "a perfected soul One achieves this perfection only through the rigors of asceticism and self-denial and through the doctrine of ahitnsa or nonviolence
The five "vows" she'd taken were typewritten on index cards and taped to the deville watch wall above a narrow pallet of dirty foam rubber on the unswept floorThat was where she slept, and given that there was nothing but the pallet in one corner of the room and a rag pile--her clothing--in the other, that must be where she sat to eat whatever it was she survived onVery, very little, from the look of her; from the look of her she could have been not fifty minutes east of Old Rimrock but in Delhi or Calcutta, near starvation not as a devout purified by her ascetic practices but as the despised of the lowest caste, miserably moving about on an untouchable's emaciated limbs
The room was tiny, claustrophobically smaller even than the cell in the juveniles' prison where, when he could not sleep, he would imagine visiting her after she was apprehendedThey had reached her room by walking from the dog and cat hospital down toward the station, then turning west through an underpass that led to McCarter Highway, an underpass no more than a hundred and fifty feet long but of the kind that causes drivers to hit the lock button on the doorThere were no lights overhead, and the walkways were strewn with broken pieces of furniture, with beer cans, bottles, lumps of things that were unidentifiableThere were license plates underfootThe place hadn't been cleaned in ten yearsMaybe it had never been cleanedEvery step he took, bits of glass crunched beneath his shoesThere was a bar stool upright in the middle of the gucci bangle watch walkwa |
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| He didn't care if he played ball ever again--he... |
06-03-2010 |
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| He didn't care if he played ball ever again--he just wanted to step out and strideIt seemed somehow that the ballplaying had cleared the way to allow him to do this, to stride in an hour down to the village, pick up the Lackawanna edition of the Newark News at the general store with the single Sunoco pump out front and the produce out on the steps in boxes and burlap bagsIt was the only store down there in the fifties and hadn't changed since the Hamlin son, Russ, took it over from his father after World War I--they sold washboards and tubs, there was a sign up outside for Frostie, a soft drink, another nailed to the clapboards for Fleischmann's Yeast, another for Pittsburgh Paint Products, even one out front that said "Syracuse Plows," hanging there from when the store sold farm equipment tooRuss Hamlin could remember from earliest boyhood a wheelwright shop perched across the way, could still recall watching wagon wheels rolled down a ramp to be cooled in the stream; remembered, too, when there was a distillery out back, one of many in the region that had made the famous local applejack and had shut down only with the passage of the Volstead ActClear at the back of the store there was one window that was the Upost office--one window was it, and thirty or so of those boxes with the combination locksHamlin's general store, with the post office inside, and outside the bulletin dior rasta board and the flagpole and the gas pump--that's what had served the old farming community as its meeting place since the days of Warren Gamaliel Harding, when Russ became proprietorDiagonally across the street, alongside where there'd been the wheelwright shop, was the six-room school-house that would be the Levovs' daughter's first schoolKids sat on the steps of the storeYour girl would meet you thereA meeting place, a greeting placeThe familiar old Newark News he picked up had a special section out here, the second section, called "Along the Lackawanna Even that pleased him, and not just reading through it at home for the local Morris news but merely carrying it home in his handThe word "Lackawanna" was pleasing to him in and of itselfFrom the front counter he'd pick up the paper with "Levov" scrawled at the top in Mary Hamlin's hand, charge a quart of milk if they needed it, a loaf of bread, a dozen fresh-laid eggs from Paul Hamlin's farm up the road, say "See ya, Russell" to the owner, and then he'd turn and stride all the way back, past the white pasture fences he loved, the rolling hay fields he loved, the corn fields, the turnip fields, the barns, the horses, the cows, the ponds, the streams, the springs, the falls, the watercress, the scouring rushes, the meadows, the acres and acres of woods he loved with all of a new country dweller's puppy love for nature, until he black chanel handbags reached the century-old maple trees he loved and the substantial old stone house he loved--pretending, as he went along, to throw the apple seed everywhere
Once, from an upstairs window, Dawn saw him approaching the house from the foot of their hill while he was doing just that, flinging out one arm, flinging it out not as though he were throwing a ball or swinging a bat but as though he were pulling hand-fuls of seed from the grocery bag and throwing them with all his strength across the face of the historic land that was now no less his than it was William Orcutt's"What are you practicing out there?" she said, laughing at him when he burst into the bedroom looking, from all that exercise, handsome as hell, big, carnal, ruddy as Johnny Appleseed himself, someone to whom something marvelous was happeningWhen people raise their glasses and toast a youngster, when they say to him, "May you have health and good fortune!" the picture that they have in mind--or that they should have in mind--is of the earthy human specimen, the very image of unrestricted virility, who burst so happily into that bedroom and found there, all alone, a little magnificent beast, his young wife, stripped of all maidenly constraints and purely, blissfully his"Seymour, what are you doing down at Hamlin's--taking ballet lessons?" Easily, so easily, with those large protecting hands of his he raised the miu miu nappa hundred and three pounds of her up from the floor where she stood barefoot in her nightgown, and using all his considerable strength, he held her to him as though he were holding together, binding together, into one unshatterable entity, the wonderful new irreproachable existence of husband and father Seymour Levov, Arcady Hill Road, Old Rimrock, New Jersey, USAWhat he had been doing out on the road--which, as though it were a shameful or superficial endeavor, he could not bring himself openly to confess even to Dawn--was making love to his life
About the intensity of his physical intimacy with his young wife he was actually more discreetTogether they were rather prudish around people, and no one would have guessed at the secret that was their sexual lifeBefore Dawn he had never slept with anybody he'd dated--he'd slept with two whores while he was in the Marine Corps, but that didn't count really, and so only after they were married did they discover how passionate he could beHe had tremendous stamina and tremendous strength, and her smallness next to his largeness, the way he could lift her up, the bigness of his body in bed with her seemed to excite them bothShe said that when he would fall asleep after making love she felt as though she were sleeping with a mountainIt thrilled her sometimes to think she was sleeping beside an enormous rockWhen she was lying under him, he would cartier tank louis cartier plunge in and out of her very hard but at the same time holding himself at a distance so she would not be crushed, and because of his stamina and strength he could keep this up for a long time without getting tiredWith one arm he could pick her up and turn her around on her knees or he could sit her on his lap and move easily under the weight of her hundred and three poundsFor months and months following their marriage, she would begin to cry after she had reached her orgasmShe would come and she would cry and he didn't know what to make of it
"What's the matter?" he asked her
"Do I hurt you?"
"NoI don't know where it comes fromIt's almost as if the sperm, when you shoot it into my body, sets off the tears
"But I don't hurt you
"Does it please you, Dawnie? Do you like it?"
"I love itThere's something about itit just gets to a place that nothing else gets toAnd that's the place where the tears areYou reach a part of me that nothing else ever reachesAs long as I don't hurt youit's just strange not being alone," she saidShe stopped crying only when he went down on her for the first time"You don't cry this way," he said"It was so different," she said"How? Why?"
"I guess I guess I'm alone again
"Do you want me not to do it again?"
"Oh, no," she laughed, "absolutely nothow did you know how to do that? Did you ever do that before?"
"Never
"Why did you then? Tell omega de ville men's watches m |
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| I will look after herShe won't do anything--I'll... |
06-02-2010 |
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| I will look after herShe won't do anything--I'll see to thatI'll see that she is taken care of, that she is given helpShelly, give me a chance to bring her back to human life--don't call the police!"
But he knew what Shelly would think: Sheila had done enough for that familyThat family was in real trouble now, but there was no more help from DrThis wasn't a faceliftFour people were deadThat girl should get the electric chairYes, the number four would transform even Shelly into an outraged citizen ready to pull the switchHe would go ahead and turn her in because she was a little bitch who deserved it
"That second time? Oh, we went everywhere," Dawn was saying"It doesn't really matter in Europe where you go, everywhere you go there are things that are beautiful, and we sort of followed that path
But the police knewJerry has already called the FBITo give Jerry her addressTo sit here so battered as to overlook the implications of disclosing what Merry had done! Battered, doing nothing--holding Dawn's hand, thinking back again to Atlantic City, to the Beau Rivage, to Merry dancing with the headwaiter--mindless of the consequences of his reckless disclosure, bereft of his lifelong talent for being Swede Levov, instead floating free of the battering ram that is this world, dreaming, dreaming, helplessly dreaming, while down in Florida the hotheaded brother who thought the worst of him and wasn't a brother to him at all, who'd been antagonized from the beginning by all the Swede had been blessed with, by that impossible perfection they'd both had to contend with, the inflamed and willful and ruthless brother who never did anything fendi spy zucca bag halfway, who would like nothing better than a reckoning--yes, a final reckoning for all the world to see
He'd turned her inNot his brother, not Shelly Salzman, but he, he was the one who'd done itWhat would it have taken to keep my mouth shut? What did I expect to get by opening it? Relief? Child-417 ish relief? Their reaction? I was after something so ridiculous as their reaction? By opening his mouth he had made things as bad as they could be--by retelling to them what Merry had told him, the Swede had done it: turned her in for killing four peopleNow he had planted his own bombWithout wanting to, without knowing what he was doing, without even being importuned, he had yielded--he had done what he should do and he had done what he shouldn't do: he had turned her in
It would have taken another day entirely to keep his mouth shut--a different day, the abolition of this dayLead me not into this day! Seeing so much so fastAnd how stoical he had always been in his ability not to see, how prodigious had been his powers to regularizeBut in the three extra killings he had been confronted by something impossible to regularize, even for himBeing told it was horrible enough, but only by retelling it had he understood how horribleAnd the instrument of this unblinding is MerryThe daughter has made her father seeAnd perhaps this was all she had ever wanted to doShe has given him sight, the sight to see clear through to that which will never be regularized, to see what you can't see and don't see and won't see until three is added to one to get four
He had seen how improbable it is that we should come from one another and how improbable it gucci backpacks is that we do come from one anotherBirth, succession, the generations, history--utterly improbable
He had seen that we don't come from one another, that it only appears that we come from one another
He had seen the way that it is, seen out beyond the number four to all there is that cannot be boundedHe had thought most of it was order and only a little of it was disorderHe'd had it backwardsHe had made his fantasy and Merry had unmade it for himIt was not the specific war that she'd had in mind, but it was a war, nonetheless, that she brought home to America--home into her very own house
And just then they heard his father scream: "No!" They heard Lou Levov screaming, "Oh my God! No!" The girls in the kitchen were screamingThe Swede understood instantaneously what was happeningMerry had appeared in her veil! And told her grandfather that the death toll was four! She'd taken the train up from Newark and walked the five miles from the villageShe'd come on her own! Now everyone knew!
The thought of her walking the length of that underpass one more time had terrified him all through dinner--in her rags and sandals walking alone through that filth and darkness among the underpass derelicts who understood that she loved themHowever, while he had been at the table formulating no solution, she had been nowhere near the underpass but--he all at once envisioned it--already back in the countryside, here in the lovely Morris County countryside that had been tamed over the centuries by ten American generations, back walking the hilly roads that were edged now, in September, with the red and burnt orange of devil's paintbrush, with a matted wholesale tiffany profusion of asters and goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace, an entangled bumper crop of white and blue and pink and wine-colored flowers artistically topping their workaday stems, all the flowers she had learned to identify and classify as a 4-H Club project and then on their walks together had taught him, a city boy, to recognize--"See, Dad, how there's a n-notch at the tip of the petal?"--chicory, cinquefoil, pasture thistle, wild pinks, joe-pye weed, the last vestiges of yellow-flowered wild mustard sturdily spilling over from the fields, clover, yarrow, wild sunflowers, stringy alfalfa escaped from an adjacent farm and sporting its simple lavender blossom, the bladder campion with its clusters of white-petaled flowers and the distended little sac back of the petals that she loved to pop loudly in the palm of her hand, the erect mullein whose tonguelike velvety leaves she plucked and wore inside her sneakers--so as to be like the first settlers, who, according to her history teacher, used mullein leaves for insoles--the milkweed whose exquisitely made pods she would carefully tear open as a kid so she could blow into the air the silky seed-bearing down, thus feeling herself at one with nature, imagining that she was the everlast-419 ing windIndian Brook flowing rapidly on her left, crossed by little bridges, dammed up for swimming holes along the way and opening into the strong trout stream where she'd fished with her father--Indian Brook crossing under the road, flowing eastward from the mountain where it arisesOn her left the pussy willows, the swamp maples, the marsh plants; on her right the walnut trees nearing fruition, only mulberry leather weeks from dropping the nuts whose husks when she pulled them apart would darkly stain her fingers and pleasantly stink them up with an acid pungencyOn her right the black cherry, the field plants, the mowed fieldsUp on the hills the dogwood trees; beyond them the woodlands--the maples, the oaks, and the locusts, abundant and tall and straightShe used to collect their beanpods in the fallShe used to collect everything, catalog everything, explain to him everything, examine with the pocket magnifying glass he'd given her every chameleonlike crab spider that she brought home to hold briefly captive in a moistened mason jar, feeding it on dead houseflies until she released it back onto the goldenrod or the Queen Anne's lace ("Watch what happens now, Dad") where it resumed adjusting its color to ambush its preyWalking northwest into a horizon still thinly alive with light, walking up through the twilight call of the thrushes: up past the white pasture fences she hated, up past the hay fields, the corn fields, the turnip fields she hated, up past the barns, the horses, the cows, the ponds, the streams, the springs, the falls, the watercress, the scouring rushes ("The pioneers used them, Mom, to scrub their pots and pans"), the meadows, the acres and acres of woods she hated, up from the village, tracing her father's high-spirited, happy Johnny Appleseed walk until, just as the first few stars appeared, she reached the century-old maple trees that she hated and the substantial old stone house, imprinted with her being, that she hated, the house in which there lived the substantial family, also imprinted with her being, that she also cartier tank louis hat |
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