Mission to America Read Online Free Page B

All-in-One had set around us as a reminder of how not to live and, especially, how not to eat. As the Seeress had been telling us for years, the buildup of yeast in people from bleached white flour promotes a restless, selfish temperament that atrophies the pituitary glands and plays havoc with natural peristalsis. If such defectives were Sarah's models now, then she was sick, too, I feared, and might grow sicker. Once she'd secured her abominable Saab, she'd look around for something else—a second Saab, maybe, in another color.
    â€œNo Missoula this year. It's bad for you,” I said.
    â€œYou've hardly been there.”
    â€œThat's immaterial.”
    â€œClever long words don't suit men.”
    â€œThey suit me fine.”
    â€œWhere do you get them? I'm curious.”
    â€œThe library.”
    â€œThe library is for dandies,” Sarah said. “If you have to use it, be quick. Don't sit and read there. It gives the wrong impression.”
    â€œSo do Saabs.”
    When I finally told Sarah plainly that our marriage might be an undertaking beyond my means, she yielded a bit in the area of chastity. One night when she'd been describing her future kitchen, and specifically the built-in ovens that would allow her to run a home-based business using the Kimmel women's beloved recipes for marionberry bran cakes and the like, I let go of her hand and walked three steps ahead of her, turned around in the middle of the logging road, and announced from a formal, manly distance that I would need an extra two years, at least, before I'd be in a position to set a wedding date. I led her through a cold, mathematical formula relating my projected weekly wages to the estimated costs of aping the Missoula way of life.
    She opened her hands and held them out to me at the level of my hips. “I'm frustrated. We don't touch enough,” she whispered. The gap between our bodies became charged and my scalp prickled as before a lightning strike. The wish flared up. I gave in. I went to her. Her warm, grabby hands crawled into my back pockets and she lowered her face so her lashes tickled my neck. “You never push me to break the rules,” she said. “I wonder why not. Don't you love me? I love you.”
    â€œI love you but not when you talk about the Saab.”
    Sarah kissed me then. In the kiss I could feel the squirming energies of unborn children impatient to leave the spirit world. Sarah wanted three children, she'd told me—two girls, one boy—but it felt as though at least twice that many souls were swarming up at me through her throat and lips. She moved a hand to my right front pocket, dug deep, and held me through the cloth. Her fingertips moved along me like a flute player's, with meticulous sequential pressure.
    â€œFine, then. A three-year-old model. But red,” she said.
    This was the night before the talk with Lauer that freed me to imagine no Saab at all.
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    The key was to make everything look like my fault. That was my mother's opinion. She'd thought things over. She'd even secretly contacted Sarah's mother, a second cousin, and discussed the matter. They agreed that although I was leaving Sarah to do the bidding of the Church, my departure might harm her social desirability unless it appeared that she'd rejected me first—and for some clear and fundamental reason that wouldn't scare off future suitors by confirming her growing reputation as a finicky, prickly, demanding shrew.
    I had to be seen as a lost cause, irredeemably unmarriageable.
    Rumors about the disqualifying trait that Lauer, the mothers, and I decided on were planted around town the following week. Within a few days they were rustling all about me whenever I stepped outside the house. When Sarah, as I knew she'd soon feel forced to, questioned me about the troubling stories, I planned to turn surly and evasive so as to head off any urge in her to empathize with me,