Grace Read Online Free Page A

civilization for some muddy understanding of why it was predestined to fail.
    â€œMaybe it would have worked if you had taken the risk in the beginning, six, four, five months ago. You know what I mean? The risk people take when they put everything on the line for what they want. Now you will go chase something else. Why worry about what we had. I don’t know why I am arguing about this.”
    â€œBecause you care? I don’t know.”
    â€œBecause I’m confused. You’re confused and confused means no. You don’t want me. You’ve merely talked yourself into it, because you like the idea of me. If you wanted me and I wanted you we would have known. But we cared for each other. It’s right to acknowledge that. If you want a family it’s wrong that we should settle for that alone.”
    What she said rang true and I relinquished the argument. What I felt, to my chagrin, was relief.
    â€œOr maybe in the end all we can do is settle. But not yet.” She rose from the window, brushing down the skirt of her dress. She came and stood next to me in her bare feet, looking up wistfully.
    â€œYou’re right.” I smiled at her.
    â€œI know,” she sighed, moving away to find her shoes. “Yet here we are in this kitchen again. Isn’t it the worst?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “The worst is that more was not given to us.” The pain I felt was not only the anguish of separation, but the agony of being at cross-purposes with myself.
    I still thought dimly we might figure out how to love each other, not accepting that love was exactly that which refused to be figured. Reason, though, made me want to rationalize that what I had with her was enough, because it seemed to make logical sense, and that was the way of thinking I trusted. The rest of it, the phenomena I could not prove logically, and were threatening to reason itself, I had been trained long ago to shut down. But, as I stood there debating what I was doing, I wondered whether I had not led myself into a trap. What I knew was the uncertainty I felt, which I could not explain, but on some level I think I wanted her because I knew it was a relationship that, even if it did not offer the depths of love, would never produce any sharper pain. I think we recognized that in each other. That we wanted to keep from feeling too much pain. What I accepted that morning, whatever hell it might cost, was I wanted to follow the other part of myself, if it was available—the rest of love.

    I cannot pinpoint when I first stopped trusting and following my own emotions; whether it was due to something I witnessed, something I read, or somewhere in my experience. But I distrusted them as much as any false comfort or all-explaining ideology anyone claimed to believe.
    The “great events” I witnessed, during the years I worked as a correspondent, covering wars for a small, barely read liberal journal, certainly did nothing to restore my faith once it was gone. The last thing I remembered before changing careers was a nineteen-year-old farm boy with three limbs gone, calling for God to help him, as the bomb blasts still rang in the air. He did not want to die, and he did not want his death to be meaningless.
    A cynic would ask which limb remained. I only swallowed my disbelief at the official version of things, spooned out at a press briefing the next day. Five of our men made the ultimate sacrifice defending their country. He was a hero, they claimed. I knew they believed it. But it seemed to me to defy the point of life. I was fearful for the future after that, and fearful of the place I was in.
    Nights I returned to the hotel, where I drank alone, writing out lifeless copy and searching through the thesaurus for another locution for lie , for injustice , for self-serving , self-perpetuating , until I knew the meaning of every word in the language except innocence, benison, absolution.
    When I could no longer abide