Read Online Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley - Free Book Online Page B

tuberculosis?”
    “Tuberculosis?”
    “All that coughing and throat-clearing in the bathroom.”
    “Oh. What? Oh, that. That’s just a habit. India is so dusty that your throat gets hypersensitive to phlegm. It goes away, I hear. Hey, Joe. Don’t worry about me, all right?”
    “How about this. I won’t talk about it.”
    “Mom can worry about me. She owes me for all those letters she didn’t write. Shit, I am so jet-lagged.”
    “You should have said something before we went out last night.”
    “Why?”
    “You didn’t seem to have a good time.”
    “I didn’t have a good time, but I had a good enough time. I’m glad we went out. Barbara and Kevin seem happy with each other.”
    “It was a nice wedding,” I say.
    “I would like that, I think,” says Michael, “being married to somebody I’d known since seventh grade. Or maybefalling in love with someone in seventh grade, and then having her grow up pretty, and shorter than me, and smart, and funny, too. You’d never have to fall in love again. In India you don’t have to fall in love at all.” Two bowls of shredded wheat, a hard-boiled egg, two pieces of toast, a glass of orange juice. He pushes himself away from the table. “Show me the lawnmower.” Joe follows him out.
    I suppose it is still my privilege to rummage in their rooms for dirty clothes, but I must say that I pause before doing it. Joe has left some shirts and underwear by the door of his room, and I pick up those, but when I go into Michael’s room, I don’t know where to begin. The bags he has brought—a knapsack and a duffel—have been emptied on the carpeting, a swath of unfamiliar, filmy items, all crumpled. There is a small pile of what look like tiny cigars, each tied with a red thread. There are pairs of sandals, some colorful pictures on parchmentlike paper, some books, a pile of blue air letters. The visible ones carry Joe’s handwriting. I go to the window and open it, intending to ask what I can wash, and I see them in the driveway in front of the garage, squatting over the lawnmower. The tools are arranged in a neat row behind them. As I watch, Joe lifts out the motor and they turn. Joe puts it down on a piece of newspaper, and they stare at it for a long time. Finally, Michael points at something, and a moment later, Joe chooses a tool and applies it to the motor. After that, it is beguiling to watch how they cooperate, with nods and exchanged glances and passing of tools and laughter. I turn and leave Michael’s room, stepping over the clothes.
    Simon Elliott was like that, handy with tools. This house is full of his work—new wiring, new chimney, floors refinished, new shower upstairs, bookshelves built into the dining-room walls. I didn’t let him do as much as he wanted to—barnboard siding in the basement, tiling around the fireplace, downstairs bathroom. His own house was thekind of project they write about in magazines, where someone buys a place with no floors, missing walls, no banisters, a hole where the toilet should be, a laundry sink as the only appliance in the kitchen. I think that inside that house he was utterly happy, because he was surrounded by his project. And he didn’t throw himself into it, either. It took him a year to get the floor down between the basement and the first floor. He was a patient man. I don’t know that my children ever really liked him. He must have seemed much duller to them than their father. He wasn’t talkative and didn’t smile very often, although, when he did, I found his smile merry and disarming. He didn’t read much, didn’t talk about the nature of anything—the brain, life, the ways of the world. And he was moody, too. Simon was the kind of man who would have been a good husband in the eyes of my father and uncles—good job, practical intelligence—and in the eyes of my mother and aunts—keeps out of the way, gives the wife a fairly free hand. Well, I might have married him, but he never thought he