Read Online Study in Perfect by Sarah Gorham - Free Book Online Page A

unplugged the digital clocks. The tarnished mantel clock chimes capriciously. Time to rise when the sun reaches the Swedish painted bed. Time to swim when it soaks the glassed-in porch and the breezeway is thick and still. Time for dinner when “counter-twilight,” a reflection of the sunset in rust and purple, appears in the east. We sit happily in one minute, two, three, as the earth rotates and colors drain from the sky.
    I think of my vacation as a miniature lifespan. During the first wide-eyed days, like the first weeks of a newborn, time is sluggish, even static. The nurturing first breakfast—oatmeal and cream, or pancakes with fresh-picked raspberries—stretches on forever. We wrap our arms around the kids, around each other. There are long, luxurious hours till lunch. We can bike to the park
and
run to town for batteries. A nap feels like a full night’s sleep. So lapses Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. The girls have occupied the roof with cushions and towels, their tanning salon. I nibble at my novel.
    I’ve brought with me two—one is a classic (family requirement), Fitzgerald’s
Tender Is the Night
. The other’s contemporary, Paula Fox’s
Poor George
.
George
is tough going for its creepy claustrophobia. Still, I dawdle and sigh over Fox’s tautobservations: “Her feet swelled like muffins through the open spaces of her suede sandals.” Fitzgerald brings the sea into every line: “Simultaneously, the whole party moved toward the water, super-ready from the long, forced inaction, passing from the heat to the cool with the gourmandise of a tingling curry eaten with chilled white wine.” Fox seems brown, clotted, and thick. Fitzgerald is turquoise and swift, but perhaps that’s because he comes second, later in the trip.
    It is a known phenomenon that long periods of time appear to pass more rapidly as people grow older. There’s a logical explanation: one day to an eleven-year-old is roughly 1/4,000 of her life, while the same twenty-four hours to a fifty-five-year-old is approximately 1/20,000 of her life. The measure of time itself remains constant. But here, even a preteen notices the hours are striding along at a conspicuous clip. By midvacation, the morning seems not so sumptuous or full. We say it’s because we slept in later. We say the book reads quickly because we are more relaxed, more able to concentrate. But the girls know better, and they are itchy.
    So we get serious, determined to cover all the bases, to squeeze in as much fun as possible. Two trips to the drive-in, one on Thursday, and one Monday, to catch both movies but avoid the crowds. Cancel the Farm because the drive’s too long and, really, aren’t we too old to be cradling kittens and baby goats? Climb Eagle Tower on the way to Little Sister Beach and pay only one parking fee. And malts, Wilson’s incredible vanilla malts every night, brought down to the dock to watch the bay swallow the sun, inch by inch.
    The Koine Greek word for “beautiful” derives from the word,
hōra
, meaning “hour.” Beauty was thus associated with“being of one’s hour,” as in a perfectly ripe cantaloupe, or a sunset at its absolute peak. Can you imagine freezing this moment, or having it all at once—a lifetime of sunsets, each slightly unique, layered one on the other, compounded till their beauty, and our experience of it, breaks down? Thank goodness the earth withholds, gives us twenty-four hours to forget, so we return each evening with a relatively fresh pair of eyes. Thank goodness for the gift of finitude, just right for this particular instant.
    Alas, the second set of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday seems like an abridged version of the first. One trip to the grocery store for grape juice and the entire afternoon seems to evaporate. Kristin and Bonnie have finished their required reading assignments, and Bonnie is satisfied with her tan.