Read Online The Distinguished Guest by Sue Miller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Sue Miller
Ads: Link
just ham, but cold chicken too, a potato salad, pickled onions and beets and cucumbers. Muffins and two kinds of pie. Oh, and cold lemonade and beer, the beer for the gents, those being
Barrett and me. I dug in, trenchermanlike, and felt in Mrs. Barrett’s attentiveness that she was probably only too aware of the nature of my bachelor meals in the parish house.
On the way home we took a long detour, ostensibly to show me the Ox River valley. Barrett talked, as he had at lunch, nearly without pause. I felt he was, and had been, politicking,
presenting his view of the men’s group he heads at church, and of the various factions that settled out as they chose a pastor—a process, dear Lily, that took nearly two
years, so you see how very special I am, and also that to become Mrs. Paul Maynard is no small achievement on your part! At any rate, so drowsy was I with the effects of the heat and the
sun and the beer, and the incessant accompaniment of Barrett’s animated voice, that it occurred to me after a while to try the experiment of not saying a word in reply.
It was true that the river valley was lush and gently beautiful, with an occasional open vista across the dark waters to the fields beyond, but Barrett noticed neither this nor my
clamped lips. He talked steadily all the way home, and I took some amusement from my private joke on him.
And then, as we all got out of the car, I to take my leave, and all the Barretts to stretch their legs and change their seating arrangements, Mrs. Barrett spoke quietly to me alone.
Had something I’d eaten upset me? Oh no, I assured her, all had been delicious. Good, she said. And then pointedly, but perhaps not without some amusement herself, “I just
worried at how quiet you were on the way home.”
I was ashamed of my little game then, Lily, and impressed with her kindness and perception. She is, I would think, only a few years older than you, though worn down by the myriad small
Barretts, and perhaps by the largest one too. I prayed for more generosity of spirit that night, but felt, as I often do here, that if you were sharing these experiences with me, I would
be easily capable of that. I would have your eyes to meet mine over an inedible meal or an endless account of someone’s minor illness, and the promise of our shared amusement later.
Remember how we laughed together after we got stuck with the Weeds at the church supper? Not unkindly I think, but with a leavening humor. (I loaned you my handkerchief to wipe away your
tears, I remember, and got it back several days later pressed into a neat square I kept in my drawer for weeks because it made me think of you, laughing till you cried.) Oh, come soon,
Lily! and leaven my life again! Lighten my load.
Your devoted,
Paul
When Lily finishes this, she sets it down. This memory shocks her. So long ago, and in anger and bitterness over what Paul eventually did—as she saw it—to their marriage, to their
life together, to the church they shared, she had cast their love in different terms from the ones that have come back to her, reading this letter. She had thought of the Lily who moved out of her
father’s house to marry Paul as someone moving from one suffocating relationship to another. She had written of her marriage as an ugly chrysalis inside which she was slowly transformed into
a being who could emerge only as it was discarded. And that is how she has come to remember it too, with this coloration of embittered hindsight. She had forgotten—how could she have
forgotten?—the gladness in her heart when these letters came, the joy of the thought of joining her life to Paul’s.
Paul!
she is thinking now, and she sees him as he was then; tall and big-boned, but skinny and so fair that from across a room—and it was across a room that she first saw him, in
the church hall at a welcoming supper—his eyebrows and lashes disappeared and he looked strangely old and frail. But when he
Barrett and me. I dug in, trenchermanlike, and felt in Mrs. Barrett’s attentiveness that she was probably only too aware of the nature of my bachelor meals in the parish house.
On the way home we took a long detour, ostensibly to show me the Ox River valley. Barrett talked, as he had at lunch, nearly without pause. I felt he was, and had been, politicking,
presenting his view of the men’s group he heads at church, and of the various factions that settled out as they chose a pastor—a process, dear Lily, that took nearly two
years, so you see how very special I am, and also that to become Mrs. Paul Maynard is no small achievement on your part! At any rate, so drowsy was I with the effects of the heat and the
sun and the beer, and the incessant accompaniment of Barrett’s animated voice, that it occurred to me after a while to try the experiment of not saying a word in reply.
It was true that the river valley was lush and gently beautiful, with an occasional open vista across the dark waters to the fields beyond, but Barrett noticed neither this nor my
clamped lips. He talked steadily all the way home, and I took some amusement from my private joke on him.
And then, as we all got out of the car, I to take my leave, and all the Barretts to stretch their legs and change their seating arrangements, Mrs. Barrett spoke quietly to me alone.
Had something I’d eaten upset me? Oh no, I assured her, all had been delicious. Good, she said. And then pointedly, but perhaps not without some amusement herself, “I just
worried at how quiet you were on the way home.”
I was ashamed of my little game then, Lily, and impressed with her kindness and perception. She is, I would think, only a few years older than you, though worn down by the myriad small
Barretts, and perhaps by the largest one too. I prayed for more generosity of spirit that night, but felt, as I often do here, that if you were sharing these experiences with me, I would
be easily capable of that. I would have your eyes to meet mine over an inedible meal or an endless account of someone’s minor illness, and the promise of our shared amusement later.
Remember how we laughed together after we got stuck with the Weeds at the church supper? Not unkindly I think, but with a leavening humor. (I loaned you my handkerchief to wipe away your
tears, I remember, and got it back several days later pressed into a neat square I kept in my drawer for weeks because it made me think of you, laughing till you cried.) Oh, come soon,
Lily! and leaven my life again! Lighten my load.
Your devoted,
Paul
When Lily finishes this, she sets it down. This memory shocks her. So long ago, and in anger and bitterness over what Paul eventually did—as she saw it—to their marriage, to their
life together, to the church they shared, she had cast their love in different terms from the ones that have come back to her, reading this letter. She had thought of the Lily who moved out of her
father’s house to marry Paul as someone moving from one suffocating relationship to another. She had written of her marriage as an ugly chrysalis inside which she was slowly transformed into
a being who could emerge only as it was discarded. And that is how she has come to remember it too, with this coloration of embittered hindsight. She had forgotten—how could she have
forgotten?—the gladness in her heart when these letters came, the joy of the thought of joining her life to Paul’s.
Paul!
she is thinking now, and she sees him as he was then; tall and big-boned, but skinny and so fair that from across a room—and it was across a room that she first saw him, in
the church hall at a welcoming supper—his eyebrows and lashes disappeared and he looked strangely old and frail. But when he
Similar Books
