Read Online To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris - Free Book Online

my transfer out of the University of Maine at Fort Kent, with certain restrictions on my freedom to reenter campus grounds. Sam and I spent eleven weeks together, during which we both understood our souls to have awakened at last and our hearts to have been filled for the first time. We were instantly inseparable, arranging our walking patterns to and from class to minimize the time we had to spend apart. We ate together, studied together, and slept together, whispering late into the night so as not to disturb her roommates. We shared the same coffee cup, the same straw, the same toothbrush. We fed each other watermelon from our mouths. We watched movies and football games under the same blanket and sat together doing our homework in the student union, looking up at regular intervals to moon at each other with shameless abandon. Sammy was always sucking on a lollipop. I loved nothing more than to hear that sugary globe knock against her sturdy white teeth while the stick grew moist and pulpy at her lips, until at last she took the nub of candy between her molars and cracked it to smithereens. She swished the clattering shards around, melting them down to oblivion. When she was finished, and the stick had been deposited with others inside an empty bottle of Diet Coke (which also contained wrappers and wads of gum), she ran her tongue over her upper lip in search of some minuscule overlooked crystal and, if she found one, drew it in and pinned it between the cairn of her canines. Then she sucked her lips clean of their sugary coats—first the upper lip, plump and double peaked, followed by the lower one, seated upon a more perfect plumb line. Of the character and true nature of Samantha Santacroce, I knew essentially nothing, but that I wanted to live forever on the edge of her glossy red lower lip, that crimson promontory, warmed in the winter byher syrupy breath and bathed with the same summer heat that brought out her freckles, I had no doubt.
    What I did know about Samantha Santacroce, because she impressed it upon me at every turn, was the fierce and unconditional love she felt for her parents. This stood in stark contrast to my impulse to hide my parents away in a closet of shame. Sammy talked about hers as if they were the people with whom she willingly planned to spend the rest of eternity, college being less a time of rebellion and self-discovery than a temporary parting in a lifelong affair. I was almost jealous of them. Bob Santacroce was a big man with fair hair who had done well in the furniture business and now spent many of his mornings on the back nine. Barbara had raised Sam (and her little brother, Nick) and now remained busy with tennis and charities. I heard so much about them before we met that they grew incomparable within a few short days and mythical within the week, so that by the time Sam and I showed up at their house for Thanksgiving, when I planned to announce my intentions of marrying their daughter (“Wait, wait,” Sam had said, “you plan to do
what?
”), I was intimidated, nervous, and as in love with them as I was with Sam herself. The Santacroces were a picture-perfect family of Catholics whose tidy garage, sturdy oak trees, and family portraits through the ages would absolve all the sins and correct all the shortcomings of my childhood. Like my infatuation with Heather Belisle, my infatuation with Sam Santacroce had this extraneous element that had nothing to do with our shared love of dogs and Led Zeppelin, her blond pageboy, or the taste of her red mouth. There were no poorly attended funerals in the Santacroce family, no scrounging for quarters under the car seats, no runs to the recycling center for macaroni money, no state-appointed psychologists, no suicides. I loved Sammy and wanted to marry her, but I also loved Mr. and Mrs. Santacroce and wantedto be adopted by them and live under the spell of their blessed good fortune forever and ever. I would affirm God and convert to