Read Online The Lone Pilgrim by Laurie Colwin - Free Book Online Page B

other hand, began her life as a rebellious, spunky, and passionate child, but she was extraordinarily pretty, and such children are never called difficult: they are called original. It was the ardent hope of these people that their children might be friends and, when they grew up, would like each other well enough to marry.
    In order to ensure their happy future, the children were brought together. If Elizabeth looked about to misbehave, Elinor Leopold placed her warm hand on Elizabeth’s forearm and, with a little squeeze Elizabeth learned to dread, would say in tones of determined sweetness: “Darling, don’t you want to see nice Nellie’s chemistry set?” Elizabeth did not want to see it—or Nelson’s stamp collection or his perfect math papers or the model city he had built with his Erector set. As she grew older, she did not want to dance with Nelson at dancing class or go to his school reception. But she did these things. That warm pressure on her forearm was as effective as a slap, although her compliance was not gained only by squeezes and horrified looks. Elizabeth had begun to have a secret life: she hated Nelson and she hated the Rodkers with secret fury. While she was too young to wonder if this loathing included her parents, she felt that if they forced Nelson upon her and chose the Rodkers for their dearest friends, they must in some way be against her. At the same time she realized that they were foolable to an amazing extent. If she smiled at Nelson, they were happy and considered her behavior impeccable. If she was rude, she spent weeks in pain—the pain of constant lectures. Thus, she learned to turn a cheerful face while keeping the fires of her dislike properly banked. The fact of the matter was that an afternoon of Nelson’s stamp collection was good for two afternoons hanging around the park with her real friends.
    Elizabeth’s friends came down with measles, chicken pox, and mumps, but Elizabeth considered Nelson her childhood disease. As she got older, she began to feel that he had ruined her early years, but in her twenties she realized what an asset he had been. Without him she would never have learned to shield herself entirely from her parents. She learned from him how little it took to please: Nelson wrapped himself up warm when it was cold. He baked cookies for his mother’s birthday. He played chess with his father. That, it appeared, sufficed—a very instructive lesson that was not lost on Elizabeth, who felt that beneath Nelson’s clean, wavy hair lived a rat, a suck-up, a traitor to all children.
    Nelson had an older brother named James. James was eight years Elizabeth’s senior, and she regarded him as veritably ancient. James had been sent away to a progressive school for the brilliant and unmanageable children of the well-to-do. Here he learned to smoke, drive a car without a license, and play cards for money. When these traits became manifest, James was plucked from the libertine environment and sent to one of the nation’s oldest and finest establishments for one last crack at making him an eventual leader of men. In this setting he drank beer, set off cherry bombs in trash cans, and hung around with town girls. By the time he was ready to graduate, he added to this sort of hell raising a penchant for seditious literature and came home spouting Marx, Mao, and Huysmans.
    At college he learned a great many more bad habits, including how to spend money, drink wine, seduce young women, and break some bone or other right before Thanksgiving vacation called him back to his family. In spite of this, he did extremely well and graduated with honors. The night of his graduation he was arrested with some of his unwholesome friends for disorderly conduct and was made to spend the night in jail. This was meant to scare him. The next morning he was released, his fingerprints in a manila envelope that he might know the kindness doled out by the