Read Online Behind the Bonehouse by Sally Wright - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sally Wright
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letting us live rent free.
Even so, I was proud of you for completing your degree, and being promoted to the lab at the dairy. Then, totally unexpectedly, in 1939, I was introduced to the pharmacist who had taken you in. I have never spoken of our conversation. I have tried to thrust it from my mind. He told me that when he had asked you the year before if you would help run the pharmacy for a week while his wife had surgery, you âpreferred not to use vacation days coming to you at the dairy.â You never returned his phone calls after that. And yet he spoke of you with sadness and confusion, rather than bitter resentment.
When war was declared after Pearl Harbor, I saw you rush to secure a job in a federal food lab that would keep you safely home. That disturbed me, though I chose not to let on. I married for life. And life is not easy. I kept my job at the IU library and wanted nothing more than a child.
After the war, when my mother was ill, and you were willing to move here so I could help care for her, I told myself that was an instance of unselfish concern. I later realized you were counting on my father to help you find a better job through his contacts at the bank. He did too. He introduced you to Bob Harrison when Harrison was getting started.
The hurt I have felt because you refused to adopt a child, I will not attempt to describe for it matters to you not at all. I have lived in emotional isolation, using the children I teach in Sunday school to help fill the very real void I have felt since we marriedâa work I do which you clearly scorn whenever the subject arises.
Yesterday, hearing what you have done out of premeditated greed and vindictiveness has forced me to make a decision I should have made long ago. I will file for divorce Monday. I no longer wish to communicate with you. I doubt you wish to speak with me. It will be the public embarrassment that troubles you most.
Jane
Carl folded the letter and slid it in the envelope, then held a corner in the flame from his lighter. He watched it burn to ash in the sink, while he said, âWhat a bitch!â twice.
Leave it to Jane to run with her paycheck, right when I need it most.
I ought to dig out the mortgage. And probably copies of the wills. And find the insurance contract too.
He threw down the last of his coffee, before he walked into the studyâthen coughed, and couldnât stop. He grabbed the corner of the desk and hacked for half a minute, facing the front window.
Elinor Nevilleson was raking her front lawn, surveying his house, and Terryâs next door, her usual expression of curious contemplation fixed firmly in place, which seemed to make it harder for Carl to actually catch his breath.
CHAPTER FOUR
Excerpt from Jo Grant Munroâs Journal:
Sunday, August 11th, 1963
â¦I donât know why, but last night I woke up about three, thinking about when Tommy was killed by the ninety-year-old farmer who couldnât see his motorcycle. I started reliving what it was like bringing Sam and Maggie home from his place and having the horse trailer have a blow-out on a fog-bound mountain road.
I remembered being so filled with grief and frustration and anger that year, with having cared for Mom through the brain tumor, and then having Tommy die tooâand it all came back right in the middle of the night with such power and detail it woke me up for good.
I went and got my first journal, the one Iâd never intended to start, but did, right after Tommyâs funeralâand reading that, while Alan slept on his side, breathing softly beside me, I realized even more than I had then how much Alan had helped me see how Iâd been choosing to react.
Tommy had always been more than an older brother. He helped me grow up my whole life, especially after Dad died so young. Then worrying about him all through the war too, made him mean more to me than most brothers probably do. And Alanâhaving been in the OSS
Even so, I was proud of you for completing your degree, and being promoted to the lab at the dairy. Then, totally unexpectedly, in 1939, I was introduced to the pharmacist who had taken you in. I have never spoken of our conversation. I have tried to thrust it from my mind. He told me that when he had asked you the year before if you would help run the pharmacy for a week while his wife had surgery, you âpreferred not to use vacation days coming to you at the dairy.â You never returned his phone calls after that. And yet he spoke of you with sadness and confusion, rather than bitter resentment.
When war was declared after Pearl Harbor, I saw you rush to secure a job in a federal food lab that would keep you safely home. That disturbed me, though I chose not to let on. I married for life. And life is not easy. I kept my job at the IU library and wanted nothing more than a child.
After the war, when my mother was ill, and you were willing to move here so I could help care for her, I told myself that was an instance of unselfish concern. I later realized you were counting on my father to help you find a better job through his contacts at the bank. He did too. He introduced you to Bob Harrison when Harrison was getting started.
The hurt I have felt because you refused to adopt a child, I will not attempt to describe for it matters to you not at all. I have lived in emotional isolation, using the children I teach in Sunday school to help fill the very real void I have felt since we marriedâa work I do which you clearly scorn whenever the subject arises.
Yesterday, hearing what you have done out of premeditated greed and vindictiveness has forced me to make a decision I should have made long ago. I will file for divorce Monday. I no longer wish to communicate with you. I doubt you wish to speak with me. It will be the public embarrassment that troubles you most.
Jane
Carl folded the letter and slid it in the envelope, then held a corner in the flame from his lighter. He watched it burn to ash in the sink, while he said, âWhat a bitch!â twice.
Leave it to Jane to run with her paycheck, right when I need it most.
I ought to dig out the mortgage. And probably copies of the wills. And find the insurance contract too.
He threw down the last of his coffee, before he walked into the studyâthen coughed, and couldnât stop. He grabbed the corner of the desk and hacked for half a minute, facing the front window.
Elinor Nevilleson was raking her front lawn, surveying his house, and Terryâs next door, her usual expression of curious contemplation fixed firmly in place, which seemed to make it harder for Carl to actually catch his breath.
CHAPTER FOUR
Excerpt from Jo Grant Munroâs Journal:
Sunday, August 11th, 1963
â¦I donât know why, but last night I woke up about three, thinking about when Tommy was killed by the ninety-year-old farmer who couldnât see his motorcycle. I started reliving what it was like bringing Sam and Maggie home from his place and having the horse trailer have a blow-out on a fog-bound mountain road.
I remembered being so filled with grief and frustration and anger that year, with having cared for Mom through the brain tumor, and then having Tommy die tooâand it all came back right in the middle of the night with such power and detail it woke me up for good.
I went and got my first journal, the one Iâd never intended to start, but did, right after Tommyâs funeralâand reading that, while Alan slept on his side, breathing softly beside me, I realized even more than I had then how much Alan had helped me see how Iâd been choosing to react.
Tommy had always been more than an older brother. He helped me grow up my whole life, especially after Dad died so young. Then worrying about him all through the war too, made him mean more to me than most brothers probably do. And Alanâhaving been in the OSS
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