Read Online Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips - Free Book Online Page B

surprise myself and understand why Charlie puts up with her, why we all put up with one another. But Gladdy, as always, can be relied on to scuttle sentiment.
    “It’s just fine,” she says. “I prefer the heat. Open windows and a cross draft are all anyone needs. Not that expensive air-conditioning that is so loud and gives a person bronchitis.”
    Elise lights a cigarette. “You have bronchitis?”
    Gladdy ignores her, but waves a hand in front of her face as though to shoo flies. She stands back and regards Charlie. “I noticed it again, Charlie. I can see the glass in that big plate window move when I walk past on the street. I keep telling you it needs tightening. One of these days it’s going to crack straight across.”
    He smiles at her. “It’s not the glass, Mother. It’s you, moving the world.”
    “Very funny. But we don’t have hundreds of dollars to replace that glass. Maybe a thousand dollars.”
    “She’s right,” I tell Charlie, standing under the wheeze of the air conditioner. “We don’t have a thousand dollars.”
    “And there are reasons why,” Gladdy shoots back.
    Then I’m out the door and the heat is like a wave, even this late in the afternoon. I look back through the window and see Elise putting out her cigarette, getting up to follow me. Gladdy is trailing Charlie back into the kitchen, chirping away.
    By the time I get to Elise’s blue Ford, she’s beside me, unlocking the passenger door, and we’re cranking down the windows, hauling both heavy doors open.
    “Wait,” Elise says.
    She’s of the opinion cars have to be aired out in the heat, that various chemicals in the upholstery and floor mats and cushioned ceiling can harm a person when the air in a car is closed and hot. We stand here, leaning on the doors. Maybe Elise is right. I can feel hot air boiling out of the car like invisible foam.
    “Well,” I tell her, “at least we entertain you.”
    “That you do.” She raises her penciled brows at me. “Gladdy was just saying how her leather watchband has been good enough for her all these years. Funny how there’s never a need to worry about being hard on Charlie. Gladdy will always do it for you.”
    “True love,” I say, “you can’t beat it. You and I, now, we have to settle for life in general being hard on us.”
    “We can’t complain,” Elise says, and smiles. “You got the time, Noreen?”
    “I do and I don’t,” I tell her. She’s not really asking. It’s a phrase she repeats in front of Gladdy, to remind her of a sore point. My watch belonged to Charlie’s grandmother, his father’s mother. She gave Charlie the watch when he was twelve, before she died—she adored him and had the sense never to like Gladdy. Gladdy can’t abide the fact Charlie gave me a Fitzgibbon heirloom. He found a jeweler in Bellington to refurbish it with a flexible platinum band and says it was worth every penny. The emerald-cut diamonds beside the rectangular face are small but perfect. Guardians of our numbers, he calls them. I won’t marry him until Gladdy dies, and I won’t have him moving in with us either. Charlie says we’re on my time, I’m in charge. He loves the watch and he loves me wearing it. The mother-of-pearl face glows in the dark just slightly, and he checks it, evenings in my bed, the nights Lark is at Barker Secretarial. He comes over and bathes Termite, puts him to bed, turns on the radio. Charlie keeps it tuned to a classical station, so Termite isn’t agitated by words. Termite likes music without words, and he falls asleep surrounded. Then Charlie and I have time. The good hour, Charlie calls it. He closes his big hand around the watch and my wrist, firm and warm, like he’s saved this for me, and he has. All these years. I’m standing here with Elise, and something quickens, flickers, at the memory of his hand in me. I’ve been married. It wasn’t like this. We still want each other, we’re practiced, it all works. Then he’s up and