Read Online Extra Innings by Doris Grumbach - Free Book Online Page B

terrible. No wonder I opted to forget such things. But her memories cheer me up.
    After a hasty trip to Washington for bookstore business, we are back in Sargentville. In the short time we stayed in the cool city, we combined our craving for Oriental food with a reunion with Jeff Campbell and Gene Berry, neighbors on the Hill and friends from the days when Sybil ran her shop on Seventh Street. Gene works at the Library of Congress and, until recently, collected first editions by living American authors he had read and admired. Then he would write to them, such charming and beguiling letters that they agreed to sign the volumes he sent. Anne Tyler, M.F.K. Fisher, and Eudora Welty are three I recall his having corresponded with.
    But at the Queen Bee, our favorite Vietnamese restaurant across the river in Arlington, he tells us his new passion is collecting antiques. He does not mention any further correspondence with writers, even antique ones, and I am saddened by his defection.… Jeff, his architect friend, is always very patient, very quiet, during Gene’s description of his enthusiasms. It’s hard to know if he shares them, but I think it would be hard not to. Gene’s eyes glow with that peculiar light common to all avid collectors when they talk about their pursuits.
    Sleeping in the apartment the first night was strange. Neither of us could remember where we were when we woke at our usual early hour. Sybil remembered first, shot out of bed, dressed, and went for the papers (‘Imagine,’ she gloated, ‘having the Post and the New York Times at seven o’clock on the same day they appear!’) and what she calls etwas and coffee from Bread and Chocolate on the corner.
    The pleasure of cities— das gewisse , that certain something—cannot be denied. Thus far I have been able to identify five: reunions with friends we have reluctantly left behind; the presence of a physician, Amiel Segal, whom I admire and trust; the morning newspapers; buttery scones from the bakery across the street; and daily Mass at St. James, five blocks away. Try as I might, I can think of no others.
    Oh yes, one other: the flea market on our block, every Sunday morning. Last week we bought a photograph of the sculpture at Hain’s Point. Jim Culhane took the picture of Charles Johnson’s remarkable work. A furious prophet lies half buried in the ground; only his arm, one leg, and his John Brown—like head can be seen. The photographer says there is talk of removing the wonderful piece and replacing it with a park. So I bought his photograph in case the sculpture disappears. This morning we decide we will hang it in Maine near the woodstove in the living room and not far from the nineteenth-century colored drawing of the Capitol.
    Graffiti spotted on a fence at Dartmouth College during a visit to Hanover:
    â€˜Why worry about tomorrow when today is so far off?’
    Jane calls to say she is still having her unpleasant health problems, although Valium continues to help. Her appointment with her neurologist is not far off. I am anxious for that to take place, although she seems quite sure nothing is really wrong. Her confidence calms me. I notice how willing I am to accept reassurance for my worry, as though I am glad to be rid of it, no matter how flimsy the grounds for its dismissal.
    A rainy, windy, misty Sunday. I worry about driving across the bridge to church in Stonington, and even more about a power failure (as common as weeds in this area. Sometimes a cloud passing overhead seems to cause the power to go off) while I am using the computer. So I abandon both enterprises, put on my heavy jacket and gloves, take the ash cane that Richard Lucas, my friend who died of AIDS, sent me in the last month of his life, and walk across to the bookstore.
    Sybil has a fire going in the woodstove, and is happily selling books to a dealer from away, and to our favorite customer, the potter Charlie Hance, who