Miss Julia's Gift: A Penguin Special from Viking Read Online Free

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    When Sam came in that particular afternoon, he greeted me as warmly as he always did—right in front of Lillian too, which embarrassed me. I was not accustomed, at the time, to such public displays and, to be truthful, still have a problem with them.
    So after dinner, I kept waiting for him to pull out some little gift—not that I wanted one, you understand, it was just that I’d come to halfway expect and halfway dread being presented with something for which I would have to worry about exhibiting the correct and expected amount of appreciation.
    We were sitting in the living room, Sam with the newspaper and I with a needlepoint piece. Hazel Marie was upstairs doing something to her hair and Little Lloyd was in his room doing schoolwork. So I was a little on edge since nothing had been forthcoming in the way of a small token of his thinking of me during the day. If he planned to give me something, I wished he’d go ahead and do it, and get it over with. My problem was not that I was eager to get a gift. My problem was that I was hard pressed to react appropriately to such manifestations of his regard. How many ways can one say, “Oh, Sam, you shouldn’t have”?
    To be so well and often thought of was unsettling.
    As if aware of my thoughts, Sam lowered the paper and said, “I have something for you, sweetheart. I hope you like it.”
    “Oh, Sam, you shouldn’t have.”
    “Well, it’s something a little different, but I thought you’d appreciate it. And it is a holiday, you know.”
    I let my needlepoint fall to my lap. “No, I didn’t know.” Almost afraid to ask, I did anyway. “What holiday is it? Or was it?”
    “Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and that’s worth commemorating, don’t you think?”
    “I’ve never thought about it.” Increasingly leery, I prepared myself to be properly impressed and delighted with whatever he’d deemed appropriate for this momentous day that was almost over.
    He pulled a folded paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. I scanned the official-looking document, noticed my name typed in, frowned, and asked, “What is it?”
    Sam came over and sat beside me on the sofa. “It’s an official notification that a contribution has been made in honor of you and the Reverend King to the Boys and Girls Club of Abbotsville.”
    “Oh, Sam,” I said, a pleased smile spreading across my face as I saw how generously he had shown his esteem for me and my co-honoree. “You shouldn’t have, but . . .,” I leaned my head against his shoulder, “I’m glad you did.” It was the best I could do.
    Yet for days afterward I mulled the incident over in my mind, feeling that I had fallen short in some way. It had truly been a thoughtful gift and one that would, as they say, keep on giving. Maybe I should’ve shown more pleasure, maybe even gushed, although to be truthful, I didn’t know exactly how to gush, having more of a composed and sedate nature that limited the range of my emotions—limited them, at least, for public consumption.
    * * *
    It was a few gift-free days later as we sat around the dining-room table finishing the tasty lemon chiffon pie that Lillian had served. Sam, at the head of the table, had been telling Little Lloyd about a certain Roman emperor who’d had a marvelous vision while Hazel Marie and I listened in, completely entranced with the story. Have I mentioned that Sam loved history—and not just the history of Abbotsville, but further back than that? He had books around the house that I could barely pick up, much less read, the current one on the bedside table by another Roman named Tacitus, whose innumerable tales of war put Sam to sleep within fifteen minutes.
    Just as his story ended, Lillian came into the dining room, removed our dessert plates, and said, “You ready now, Mr. Sam?”
    Sam nodded and smiled across the table at me. “Yes, let’s have it.”
    With a laugh, Lillian went back to the kitchen and came back bearing a