Read Online The Visiting Privilege by Joy Williams - Free Book Online Page A

give him a piece of homemade key lime pie.
    The yard boy was content. He had hard muscular arms and a tanned back. He had compassion. He had a girlfriend. When he thought about it, he supposed that having a girlfriend was a cop-out to the security he had eschewed. This was a preconception, however, and a preconception was the worst of all the forms of security. The yard boy believed he was in balance on this point. He tried to see things the way they were from the midst of nowhere, and he felt that he had worked out this difficulty about the girlfriend satisfactorily. The important thing was to be able to see through the veils of preconception.
    The yard boy was a handsome fellow. He seldom spoke. He was appealing. Now that he was a yard boy his hands smelled of 6-6-6. His jeans smelled of tangelos. He was honest and truthful, a straightforward person who did not distinguish between this and that. For the girlfriend he always had a terrific silky business that was always at the ready.
    The yard boy worked for several very wealthy people. In the morning of every day he got into his pickup and drove over the causeways to the Keys, where he mowed and clipped and cut and hauled. He talked to the plants. He always told them what he was going to do before he did it so they would have a chance to prepare themselves. Plants have lived in the Now for a long time but they still have to have some things explained to them.
    —
    At the Wilsons’ house the yard boy clips a sucker from a grapefruit tree. It is February. Even so, the tree doesn’t like it much. Mrs. Wilson comes out and watches the yard boy while he works. She has her son with her. He is about three. He doesn’t talk yet. His name is Tao. Mrs. Wilson is wealthy and can afford to be wacky. What was she supposed to do, after all, she asked the yard boy once, call her kid George? Larry? For god’s sake.
    Her obstetrician had told her at the time that he had never seen a more perfectly shaped head.
    The Wilsons’ surroundings are splendid. Mrs. Wilson has splendid clothes, a splendid figure. She has a wonderful Cuban cook. The house is worth three-quarters of a million dollars. The plantings are worth a hundred thousand dollars. Everything has a price. It is fantastic. A precise worth has been ascribed to everything. Every worm and aphid can be counted upon. It costs a certain amount of money to eradicate them. The sod is laid down fresh every year. For weeks after the lawn is installed, the seams are visible and then the squares of grass gather together and it becomes, everywhere, in sun or shade, a smooth, witty and improbable green like the color of a parrot.
    Mrs. Wilson follows the yard boy around as he tends to the hibiscus, the bougainvillea, the poinciana, the Java flower, the flame vine. They stand beneath the mango, looking up.
    “Isn’t it pagan?” Mrs. Wilson says.
    Close the mouth, shut the doors, untie the tangles, soften the light, the yard boy thinks.
    Mrs. Wilson says, “I’ve never understood nature, all this effort. All this will…” She flaps her slender arms at the reeking of odors, the rioting colors. Still, she looks up at the mangoes, hanging. Uuuuuh, she thinks.
    Tao is standing between the yard boy and Mrs. Wilson with an oleander flower in his mouth. It is pink. Tao’s hair is golden. His eyes are blue.
    The yard boy removes the flower from the little boy’s mouth. “Poisonous,” the yard boy says.
    “What is it!” Mrs. Wilson cries.
    “Oleander,” the yard boy says.
    “Cut it down, dig it out, get rid of it,” Mrs. Wilson cries. “My precious child!” She imagines Tao being kidnapped, held for an astronomical ransom by men with acne.
    Mrs. Wilson goes into the house and makes herself a drink. The yard boy walks over to the oleander. The oleander trembles in the breeze. The yard boy stands in front of it for a few minutes, his clippers by his side.
    Mrs. Wilson watches him from the house. She sips her drink and rubs the glass