glasses.
“Must take a lot of time.”
He was standing, leaving, and I would see him out the door and down the stairs and gone and that would be the end of it. How would I be able to go back into that apartment, sit down behind those curtains in my chair to watch again?
“Feel like a movie some time next week?”
The heart leaps back and floats into the throat. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”
“Good. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“He won’t,” I thought. But he did.
My handwriting here, following the straight lines of this notebook, is so fine I could weep at the beauty of it.
10
L isten, people invest in the stockmarket, in real estate, in gold. They put their money, what is valuable to them, into something from which they believe they can expect a reasonable return. They give up, perhaps, immediate rewards for the prospect of something better in the future.
People make investments all the time. I, too. I took the only thing I had, my sole possession, myself, whatever that might have turned out to be, and invested it in Harry. People make investments all the time. Why not me?
I thought it built up, like a savings account, a safe six, eight, ten per cent a year. After a few dabblings in the market—those high school dances, the gritting of teeth, the money spent on lipsticks and powders, the university tuition, and a poem—comes the real plunge: all my assets diving into Harry.
My mother used to say, “Whatever you do will come back to you.” When I was a child, that filled me with terror. My small sins—to have, in a moment of wanton rebellion, stuck out my tongue at her behind her back; to have secretly plucked all the hair from one of Stella’s dolls; to have ridden my bicycle around the block when I was not supposed to gobeyond the corner—these things made the night uneasy. I wondered what form my sins might take, returning on me.
But it should work the other way as well. If I did good, kind, and helpful things, they should also come back to me.
I was as good as it seemed reasonable to be. I am no saint, and one has to make accommodations to reality. Otherwise there would be nothing one could eat that did not have some wickedness in its past, and no place one could move (although I didn’t move a great deal, and for myself, ate little).
I was faithful and tried to be kind. When people came to the door canvassing for heart funds or for cancer, I gave them money. And I read the newspapers and magazines, I could identify the worst offenders, and if I saw grapes in the supermarket that came from Chile, or apples from South Africa, I did not buy them if there was some other choice.
But one must have a sense of balance about these things. Harry liked grapes (as I did, for that matter), and he also liked crisp, sharp-tasting apples. Those places were so far away, and Harry was right here. And there were conflicting viewpoints: what difference did it make if I did not buy the grapes? Who was hurt? The generals in Chile would not say, “Edna Cormick didn’t buy our food today,” and in South Africa they did not say, “Edna Cormick turned down our apples.” Of course I believed in peace and full stomachs and in fairness. (It’s only fair, Edna, said Dottie Franklin.) But who or what was I intended to serve first? The man who came home, or faceless people far away?
I was not the sort of person to carry a sign, march in front of an embassy, shout slogans into television cameras. I was a small woman doing her best. These things are too big for such a person to work out, and all I could do was my best; so I tried to keep my own small portion safe and pass by the grapes andapples when there was some other choice, and thought if I made my own tiny universe safe and good, that should be enough, and would meet the payments on whatever might be owed.
Maybe I didn’t go far enough. But I went further than a lot of other people. And I was unobtrusive. Who would notice me, going down a street
“Must take a lot of time.”
He was standing, leaving, and I would see him out the door and down the stairs and gone and that would be the end of it. How would I be able to go back into that apartment, sit down behind those curtains in my chair to watch again?
“Feel like a movie some time next week?”
The heart leaps back and floats into the throat. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that.”
“Good. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“He won’t,” I thought. But he did.
My handwriting here, following the straight lines of this notebook, is so fine I could weep at the beauty of it.
10
L isten, people invest in the stockmarket, in real estate, in gold. They put their money, what is valuable to them, into something from which they believe they can expect a reasonable return. They give up, perhaps, immediate rewards for the prospect of something better in the future.
People make investments all the time. I, too. I took the only thing I had, my sole possession, myself, whatever that might have turned out to be, and invested it in Harry. People make investments all the time. Why not me?
I thought it built up, like a savings account, a safe six, eight, ten per cent a year. After a few dabblings in the market—those high school dances, the gritting of teeth, the money spent on lipsticks and powders, the university tuition, and a poem—comes the real plunge: all my assets diving into Harry.
My mother used to say, “Whatever you do will come back to you.” When I was a child, that filled me with terror. My small sins—to have, in a moment of wanton rebellion, stuck out my tongue at her behind her back; to have secretly plucked all the hair from one of Stella’s dolls; to have ridden my bicycle around the block when I was not supposed to gobeyond the corner—these things made the night uneasy. I wondered what form my sins might take, returning on me.
But it should work the other way as well. If I did good, kind, and helpful things, they should also come back to me.
I was as good as it seemed reasonable to be. I am no saint, and one has to make accommodations to reality. Otherwise there would be nothing one could eat that did not have some wickedness in its past, and no place one could move (although I didn’t move a great deal, and for myself, ate little).
I was faithful and tried to be kind. When people came to the door canvassing for heart funds or for cancer, I gave them money. And I read the newspapers and magazines, I could identify the worst offenders, and if I saw grapes in the supermarket that came from Chile, or apples from South Africa, I did not buy them if there was some other choice.
But one must have a sense of balance about these things. Harry liked grapes (as I did, for that matter), and he also liked crisp, sharp-tasting apples. Those places were so far away, and Harry was right here. And there were conflicting viewpoints: what difference did it make if I did not buy the grapes? Who was hurt? The generals in Chile would not say, “Edna Cormick didn’t buy our food today,” and in South Africa they did not say, “Edna Cormick turned down our apples.” Of course I believed in peace and full stomachs and in fairness. (It’s only fair, Edna, said Dottie Franklin.) But who or what was I intended to serve first? The man who came home, or faceless people far away?
I was not the sort of person to carry a sign, march in front of an embassy, shout slogans into television cameras. I was a small woman doing her best. These things are too big for such a person to work out, and all I could do was my best; so I tried to keep my own small portion safe and pass by the grapes andapples when there was some other choice, and thought if I made my own tiny universe safe and good, that should be enough, and would meet the payments on whatever might be owed.
Maybe I didn’t go far enough. But I went further than a lot of other people. And I was unobtrusive. Who would notice me, going down a street
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