Read Online Peaceable Kingdom by Francine Prose - Free Book Online

loved you might actually have been fun. Anyway, what was happening with us seemed beyond discussion. In the library, we acted the same as before, but it was no longer exciting. It left me nervous and sad. I stopped reading the books he brought back. All I had to do was look at them and a heaviness overcame me, that same pressure in the chest that on certain days warns you it’s not the right time to start leafing through family albums of the family dead.
    I no longer read at all. Without that awareness of what Lewis might choose, I’d lost my whole principle of selection. Out of habit, I browsed the shelves; nothing seemed any less boring than anything else. I gave up Love Connection , but often fell asleep watching TV, not for entertainment so much as for steadiness, comfort, and noise. For a while I forgot the doll, then considered throwing it out. I wound up tossing the counterpane over its head and leaving it in its chair; the doll showed no reaction. I remember waves of a tingly frostbite chill, a physical burning that sent me racing to the mirror. Naturally, nothing showed. It should not have been so painful, the whole thing had been so short-lived, not nearly so bad as, say, the breakup of a long marriage, losing someone you’ve shared years and children with. That pain is about everything: your life, your childhood, death, your past. Mine was purely about the future.
    That winter the future took a very long time to come. I felt that time had become an abyss I would never get across. And then at last it was spring. The Carsons returned from Italy. Their eyes kept flickering past me till they’d reassured themselves that the house was in perfect shape. Then they thanked me for forwarding their mail, inquired after my winter, told me that Florence had been marvelous fun, and asked if I’d seen the ghost. No, I said. I hadn’t.
    “No one has,” said Mrs. Carson. “But once you know about it…Now that you’re leaving, I can tell you. I’m always reluctant to lease this place to couples with small children because the ghost, oh, it’s horrible, the ghost is supposed to be that of a child.”
    For just a moment I got the chills. I refused to let this sink in. I wondered if her reluctance really had to do with the supernatural or with damage control. I said, “Well, if that’s the case, I’m leaving the ghost a present.” I indicated the doll. They weren’t exactly thrilled. The doll, after all, was Victorian, hopelessly out-of-period. They seemed already tired of me and impatient for a reunion with their possessions.
    Outside, packed, was the car I had just bought; even its monthly-payment book seemed a sign of faith in the future. I was moving to Boston to enroll in a library science program. I said goodbye to the Carsons and got in my car and drove off. On my way out of town, I drove past the golf course on which, from the corner of my eye, I spotted what looked like a sprinkling of brilliant orange poppies. It took me a while to realize that they were plastic tees.
    Moments of recovery are often harder to pinpoint than moments of shock and loss, but I knew then at what precise instant I’d stopped grieving over Lewis. It had been late April, or early May, a few weeks before the Carsons came home. The tulips were in bloom. I’d been at work, shelving books, deep in the stacks. A volume on Coptic religious texts had fallen open to reveal a magazine hidden inside. It was a fetish magazine called The Best of Rubber Life . Inside were color photos of mostly plump, mostly female couples. Some of the women wore babydoll pajamas, others were in rubber suits or in the process of putting them on. Most were in quasi-sexual poses though no one seemed to be touching or making love. Everyone gazed at the camera, full frontal stares in some hard-to-read middle between totally blank and bold.
    I wondered whose it was. I considered some (mostly elderly) men who seemed like possible candidates. I thought meanly: maybe it