appear to value me, and so the hell with them.
At least Sally could be reassured. No long dresses, and no wrap a tenth as gorgeous as her dragon robe.
Ed Abbot was antic, and full of party spirit. Going up the walk, he scared the bullbats with a rebel yell and spooked a cat out of the shadows. In two bounds it disappeared under the lilacs, while he helped it on its way with a screech.
“Yander goes a critter!”
Out of Wanda Ehrlich came a laugh like a hiccup, inadvertent and incredulous. “Ed, you cracker,” said his wife, “you’ll rouse the neighborhood.”
Laughing, smiling, or being superior, each according to his kind, we clustered under the light. Since I was closest to it, I pushed the bell button.
There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor’s only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor’s wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall.
I suppose this bell sounded in the hall. But no dazed and haggard doctor answered the door. This door was yanked open, exposing the brilliantly lighted interior, and in the doorway stood—who? Theseus and Ariadne? Troilus and Criseyde? Ruslan and Liudmila?
Oh, my goodness. House detective, did I say? Did I mention Spenser’s
Faerie Queene
?
Side by side, dressed for the party, shouting welcome, blinding the dim porch with their smiles, these two were the total antithesis of academic mousiness, economic depression, and the meager living that had been our tenement for most of our conscious lives. To our dazed eyes, they were as splendid a pair as lamplight ever shone upon.
Charity I was prepared for, more or less—the fine narrow head, the drawn-back hair, the vivid face, the greetings that managed to be excitedly personal even while she was dividing them among eight of us. She was dressed in a white ruffled blouse and a long skirt made, apparently, of a Paisley bedspread or tablecloth with a hole cut in the center. Her pregnancy didn’t show yet. By February, she would look like a Mississippi River tug pushing a three-by-five tow, but right then, in her doorway, crying greeting, she looked simply tall, beautiful, exotic, and exuberant.
But Sidney Lang, he overwhelmed the sight. He wore an embroidered shirt that I thought might be Greek or Albanian or Jugoslav, but that might have come from Mexico, Guatemala, North Africa, or some tribal culture in the Caucasus. And dress was the least part of his transformation. Something had enlarged and altered him. If this had happened in recent years, I would be compelled toward images of Clark What’s-His-Name throwing off his glasses and business suit and emerging in his cape as Superman.
This English instructor in his Balkan or whatever it was shirt, standing by his beautiful wife and crushing the hands of his guests, was by Michelangelo out of Carrara, a giant evoked from the rock. At the university, in his gray suit, he had seemed of no more than medium height, perhaps because he stooped so attentively to hear the slightest word from the person he was talking to, perhaps because his neat, fair hair made him look somehow ineffectual. Walking with me to a class the day before, he had all but skipped to keep in step, inclining his head to hear the wisdom that dropped from my lips, and I had felt at once flattered and superior.
At least Sally could be reassured. No long dresses, and no wrap a tenth as gorgeous as her dragon robe.
Ed Abbot was antic, and full of party spirit. Going up the walk, he scared the bullbats with a rebel yell and spooked a cat out of the shadows. In two bounds it disappeared under the lilacs, while he helped it on its way with a screech.
“Yander goes a critter!”
Out of Wanda Ehrlich came a laugh like a hiccup, inadvertent and incredulous. “Ed, you cracker,” said his wife, “you’ll rouse the neighborhood.”
Laughing, smiling, or being superior, each according to his kind, we clustered under the light. Since I was closest to it, I pushed the bell button.
There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic. When you stand outside a door and push the button, something has to happen. Someone must respond; whatever is inside must be revealed. Questions will be answered, uncertainties or mysteries dispelled. A situation will be started on its way through unknown complications to an unpredictable conclusion. The answer to your summons may be a rush of tearful welcome, a suspicious eye at the crack of the door, a shot through the hardwood, anything. Any pushing of any doorbell button is as rich in dramatic possibility as that scene in Chekhov when, just as the Zemstvo doctor’s only child dies of diphtheria and the doctor’s wife drops to her knees beside the bed and the doctor, smelling of carbolic, takes an uncertain step backward, the bell sounds sharply in the hall.
I suppose this bell sounded in the hall. But no dazed and haggard doctor answered the door. This door was yanked open, exposing the brilliantly lighted interior, and in the doorway stood—who? Theseus and Ariadne? Troilus and Criseyde? Ruslan and Liudmila?
Oh, my goodness. House detective, did I say? Did I mention Spenser’s
Faerie Queene
?
Side by side, dressed for the party, shouting welcome, blinding the dim porch with their smiles, these two were the total antithesis of academic mousiness, economic depression, and the meager living that had been our tenement for most of our conscious lives. To our dazed eyes, they were as splendid a pair as lamplight ever shone upon.
Charity I was prepared for, more or less—the fine narrow head, the drawn-back hair, the vivid face, the greetings that managed to be excitedly personal even while she was dividing them among eight of us. She was dressed in a white ruffled blouse and a long skirt made, apparently, of a Paisley bedspread or tablecloth with a hole cut in the center. Her pregnancy didn’t show yet. By February, she would look like a Mississippi River tug pushing a three-by-five tow, but right then, in her doorway, crying greeting, she looked simply tall, beautiful, exotic, and exuberant.
But Sidney Lang, he overwhelmed the sight. He wore an embroidered shirt that I thought might be Greek or Albanian or Jugoslav, but that might have come from Mexico, Guatemala, North Africa, or some tribal culture in the Caucasus. And dress was the least part of his transformation. Something had enlarged and altered him. If this had happened in recent years, I would be compelled toward images of Clark What’s-His-Name throwing off his glasses and business suit and emerging in his cape as Superman.
This English instructor in his Balkan or whatever it was shirt, standing by his beautiful wife and crushing the hands of his guests, was by Michelangelo out of Carrara, a giant evoked from the rock. At the university, in his gray suit, he had seemed of no more than medium height, perhaps because he stooped so attentively to hear the slightest word from the person he was talking to, perhaps because his neat, fair hair made him look somehow ineffectual. Walking with me to a class the day before, he had all but skipped to keep in step, inclining his head to hear the wisdom that dropped from my lips, and I had felt at once flattered and superior.
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