Read Online Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin - Free Book Online Page B

Polly said. “It would be heavenly—absolutely heavenly—but I can’t do it. I know I can’t.”
    â€œWell, it may happen, and it may not,” said Lincoln. “You know how these things are. A woman from the Galerie Georges Deliel cornered me at the opening, but it may be just talk. Even if they have the show I might not have to be present. I’d miss you an awful lot if I did go, you know. Some day, Dolly, when we’re both fifty-five and the grubs are in graduate school, we can astound everyone by running off together. We’ll go to India on a sketching tour.”
    â€œWhat will I do while you sketch?”
    â€œYou’ll sketch, too. I’ll buy you a sketch book and some number-three pencils. You’ll have to wear one of those English garden-party hats. We’ll go into the countryside and sleep in hunting lodges under mosquito netting. Then we can investigate the local school system and find out how little Indian children are taught to read, and you can write an award-winning study. I’ll illustrate it. We’ll run away, that’s what we’ll do.”
    He kissed her on the cheek and she turned to him. Her eyes were blazing. “Oh, Lincoln,” she said. “I love you so very much.”
    At five o’clock Polly called to say she was on her way home. Lincoln watched her as she got dressed. He loved seeing those thick, expensive garments transform her back into a respectable matron. He made her the farewell cup of coffee she loved and they arranged their weekly schedule.
    â€œWhat do you have on this week?” he said.
    â€œPartners’ dinner tomorrow. Home Tuesday. Henry’s in Boston on Wednesday. Thursday we have Paul, the Peck-hams, and the Sterns for dinner. Friday we’re going to the theater with Mum, Daddy, Aunt Lilly, Uncle Francis, and Henry and Andreya.”
    â€œI thought they hated art,” Lincoln said. “Or don’t they consider theater art?”
    â€œWell, they do, actually,” said Polly.
    â€œThat’s how dumb they are.”
    â€œThey like to go to the theater so they can misbehave,” Polly said. “You know, the thing about them is that they can get away with murder. They sit in the theater and fidget, and they eat those awful Milk Duds and Henry rattles the box. And they talk and giggle and the people in back of them have to ask them to shut up, but they don’t. I tell you, she and Henry look like those little plush brother and sister mice we used to get in our Christmas stockings and they’re so adorable that no one ever gets annoyed.”
    â€œExcept the people in back of them.”
    â€œExcept for them,” Polly said. “We always think that if the people in the back saw them from the front they would be enchanted, too.”
    Lincoln gave her a bleak look. “Is that what you all think?” he said. “Milk Duds, for God’s sake, why don’t they grow up?”
    â€œThey’re engineers,” said Polly. “Maybe that explains it.”
    Lincoln shot her another baleful look. At this point on a Sunday afternoon, both were edgy.
    These days the light faded early and fast. There was only one lamp on in the studio—one by Lincoln’s bed that had a dark yellow paper shade. It threw long, bleak shadows everywhere. Lincoln’s neatness, in that mournful, dusky light, looked singular and austere. This was a place you visited, the home of a hermit who had occasional guests. There were moments when that solitude looked delicious to Polly and when the thought of the Demarest household uptown sounded rich and happy to Lincoln. This was their worst time: when she was set to go home, and he was set to have her leave, and both were so ardent that they could not bear to part.
    Polly sat down next to him at the table and nudged his arm with her forehead. He put his arm around her.
    â€œWhat do you have on?” she said.
    â€œNothing