new rhythm of life, something people who lived in towns had forgotten. How country people slept differently, tasted their food differently, had no nerves. âI havenât a nerve in my body, any more. Absolutely placid,â she said, her sharp little gestures, her black eyes in the pinched face challenging a denial. âNothing ever happens but a change of season,â she said arrogantly to people for whom there were stock-market crashes, traffic jams, crowded exhibitions and cocktail parties. âBirth and growth among the animals and the plants. Life. Not a cement substitute.â No one defended the city, but she went on as if someone had. âI live as instinctively as one of our own animals. So does my child. I mean, for one thing, we donât have to worry about clothes.â
Eileen said rather foolishly, as if in reflex, âStefan said I couldnât wear slacks to a New York restaurant today.â
âStefan was always a snob.â Carlittaâs little head struck like a snake.
Eileen was taken aback; she laughed nervously, looking very young. Carlitta grinned wickedly under the hat whose straw caught the light concentrically, like a gramophone record. Stefanâs wife smiled serenely and politely, as if this were a joke against her husband. She had taken off the jacket of her suit, and beneath it she wore a fine lavender-coloured sweater with a low, round neck. She had been resting her firm neck against her left hand, and now she took the hand away; hers was the kind of wonderful blood-mottled fair skin that dented white with the slightest pressure, filled up pink again the way the sea seeps up instantly through footprints in wet sand. She looked so healthy, so well cared for that she created a moment of repose around herself; everyone paused, resting his gaze upon her.
Then Carlittaâs thin little sun-sallow neck twisted restlessly. âI donât know how you stand it,â she said. âI donât know how you can live in New York year after year.â
âWe go away,â Stefan said soothingly. âWe go to Europe most summers, to Switzerland to my mother, or to Italy. Alice loves Italy.â
âItaly,â said Carlitta, suddenly turning over a piece of lobster on her plate as if she suspected that there must be something bad beneath it. âSpain.â
âYou remember how you went off to the Pyrenees?â Waldeck said to her. From his tone it was clear that this was quite a story, if Carlitta cared to tell it.
âYou canât imagine how time flies on the farm,â said Carlitta. âThe years . . . just go. Sometimes, in summer, I simply walk out of the house and leave my work and go and lie down in the long grass. Then you can hear nothing, nothing at all.â
âMaybe the old cow chewing away under the pear tree,â said Edgar tenderly. Then with a chuckle that brought a change of tone: âCarlitta takes a big part in community affairs, too, you know. She doesnât tell you that sheâs on the library committee in town, and last year she was lady president of the Parent-Teacher Association. Ran a bazaar made around three hundred dollars.â There was a pause. Nobody spoke. âIâm an Elk myself,â he added. âThatâs why weâre going to Philadelphia Thursday. Thereâs a convention on over there.â
Carlitta suddenly put down her fork with a gesture that impatiently terminated any current subject of conversation. (Eileen thought: she must always have managed conversation like that, long ago in smoky, noisy student rooms, jerking the talk determinedly the way she wanted it.) Her mind seemed to hark back to the subject of dress. âLast year,â she said, âwe invited some city friends who were passing through town to a supper party. Now it just so happened that that afternoon I could see a storm banking up. I knew that if the storm came in the night it was goodbye to our
Robert Goddard
Susan May Warren
Ward Just
Ray Bradbury
Xara X. Piper;Xanakas Vaughn
Marilyn Levinson
Joshua Guess
Edward S. Aarons
William Tenn
Marc Cerasini