Read Online Peaceable Kingdom by Francine Prose - Free Book Online Page B

when they themselves were feverishly drinking away the longueurs of a children’s party, the parents who hired him almost never offered him drinks. It was as if he were one of the children, or had been hired to drive them somewhere instead of just entertain them.
    Grady smiled. “Miss Manners would say bourbon, a little ice. Please. Thank you.” Caroline laughed and poured him a big glass of bourbon.
    “You really shouldn’t,” she said. “Bourbon has the most toxins.” Even as it occurred to Grady that this was her way of flirting, some note in her voice made him realize which of the TV-watching girls was hers. He was thinking of how to say this when he looked past the hutch and saw a photo of Mr. Rogers grinning at him from the wall.
    “Gee,” Grady said. “I’m finding it a little hard to drink this with Mr. Rogers watching.”
    “Oh,” said Caroline. “I don’t think Fred would object.” She spoke warningly, as people do when you are about to slander someone and they signal you: Careful. This is a friend.
    “Do you mind if I ask,” Grady said, “why you have a framed photo of Mr. Rogers on your wall?”
    “I don’t know if you know,” said Caroline, “but we have two sets of kids.” She gestured up at the ceiling and down at the floor. “The girls are from previous marriages, but Walt is our joint production. I used to watch Mr. Rogers with my first family, then I started watching him again with Walt. And there Fred Rogers was, still hanging in there. I wrote him a fan letter, and he sent me a very nice note.”
    “That’s wonderful,” Grady mumbled. Barbara used to say that Mr. Rogers was the last guy in the world she would leave Harry alone in a room with. But he couldn’t tell Caroline that. It was a year since Barbara left—a year and two months, exactly. A year before that, a car had rear-ended her at a stop sign and left her in constant intractable pain from a headache nothing could touch. They’d seen a dozen doctors and at some point half the doctors asked: What happened to the car? It was embarrassing to have to say: Only one taillight got smashed.
    Last Christmas Eve, Barbara sent Grady and Harry out for whipping cream for the eggnog. She’d been so specific—they’d driven around for ages till they found the only cream in the county that wasn’t ultra-pasteurized—and by the time they got back she had packed and left. Christmas Eve: they would always know precisely how long she’d been gone. Now she called Harry weekly and sent postcards from Berkeley, where she was in herbal therapy with a homeopath from Bombay; her handwriting was unrecognizable, sloppy and round as a child’s. In nearly every card, she advised Grady to put sunscreen on Harry, as if she had forgotten they lived in a place with seasons. The longer Grady thought about this, the harder it became to let Caroline know that his silence was not a judgment on her warm feelings for Fred Rogers. Finally Caroline said, “Let’s go find my husband. Do you need any help setting up?”
    Actually Grady didn’t; he’d designed the show that way. Still, he followed Caroline, who was, he sensed, bringing him not for help but to be checked out. She led him through a cathedral-like addition, its rough beams and glass walls suggesting an Alpine ski lodge with guests who had nothing to do but wait for the clouds to part for their personal glimpse of the Matterhorn. The afternoon light made everything look glittery and expensive—the snowy field outside, the tinsel, the candles floating in glass bowls, the gleaming metallic thread shot through the women’s sweaters.
    The man whose forearm Caroline touched was talking to a pale girl with greased, lacquer-black short hair and wine-red raccoony eye shadow. She smiled once and vanished when Caroline said, “Eliot, this is Grady. Grady’s doing Walter’s puppets.” The man who shook Grady’s hand had the serious good looks of certain anchormen who Grady was always shocked