Read Online Spirit of the Place (9781101617021) by Samuel Shem - Free Book Online Page A

you, well, moderately successful. One grandchild. We waited for a grandchild from you, but oh no, not you, you just wouldn’t give us one. Not even
one!
The barren one is
you.
”
    â€œGo away,” he said.
    â€œI am away.”
    â€œLeave me alone.”
    â€œThat’s not how it works.”
    â€œHow does it work?”
    â€œYou leave
me
alone! I gave my life to you and your sister and now you run away again? Just like your whole life. Run away from love. Run, run, run. Runaway. And then you sit here in your old room mooning around about yourself? Total selfishness. I mean, did I sweeten the pie or what? Sol’s hard-earned dollars, the very lovely home, the customized New Yorker with only thirty-four thousand and some miles on it?
Oy gevalt!
”
    â€œWhat do you mean I have to leave you alone?”
    â€œDare you to stay, honey-bunny.
Ciao!
”
    Doing a barrel roll like one of Sol’s radio-controlled fighters, Selma flew stomach down in a nosedive toward the square, pulling out at the last second and then rising, rising, that hefty nose cutting the air like a rocket, banking around the green copper dome of the courthouse and away. Gone.
    Orville ran downstairs and out into the town.
    It was a hot, hazy summer night. The particular NOW on his watch was where the three might have been. He walked along Washington Street, the spine of the town, the spine of a humpbacked whale whose ribs were the eight ruler-straight cross-streets numbered First through Eighth, each curling down into the South Swamp through which he’d walked into town, and down into the North Swamp stretching toward Albany. Why the meticulous grid? Bizarre, in this town where breakage rules.
    He found himself facing the General Worth Hotel. In the dead quiet on the deserted street, he stared at the condemned hotel’s sagging front portico, the whole right side flaccid—like his mother’s half-paralyzed face. It was almost as if it, too, were talking to him, talking awkwardly, slurring its words the way she, with the half-dead lip and tongue, often slurred hers:
“Save me! I’m half-dead. They wanna blow me up and finish me off. You’re a doctor, save me! I’m ‘Worth Saving,’ aren’t I?”
    Orville blinked in astonishment. Now a building is talking to me? He listened more closely. Nothing.
    He ran home. Drank some more bourbon, lit a Parodi, and turned on the TV .
    Nuns were dancing, interrupted by The Man With the Vegematic.
    The phone rang. His heart raced.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œ
Caro?
”
    â€œThank God!”
    â€œI was so worried when you didn’t call.”
    â€œI lost the number, forgot the name of the place.”
    â€œTell me
tutto
—everything!”
    â€œI love you!” Orville said, choking up.
    â€œAnd I love you, too!”
    â€œI love you so!”
    â€œAnd I you. I was so afraid, not hearing anything, maybe you fell out of our love.”
    â€œNever! I’ve got my flight back.”
    â€œAnd now I am glowing all over my body with your words, your spirit. In my very toes,
mio dito del piede!
When do you arrive and where?” He told her. “
Bene.
I will meet you in Milano. Now, tell me
tutto, pronto.
”
    He told her about Selma’s will, although, taking heed of her warning never to talk to her about money, merely said that there was possibility of some money if he stayed. “But the reason she demanded that I—”
    â€œHow much money?” Celestina asked.
    â€œBut you said never to—”
    â€œ
Sì, sì,
but this is
fatto,
the fact. It is okay to tell me.”
    â€œJust under a million dollars. And the house and the Chrysler.”
    Silence on the line.
    â€œHello?” Orville said. “Celestina? Hello?
Hello?
”
    â€œI am here,
caro.
Tell me everything else.”
    He told her some things but couldn’t tell her about his desperate sense of barrenness, about