Sweet Life Read Online Free
her.
She’d no reason to believe this. During their courting and marriage, he hadn’t once copied out a poem or left her any scribbled endearments, so it wasn’t a surprise the history yielded nothing, as did The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the How to Make the Money You Always Dreamed Of Making.
Angie filled the shelves with her own books, beginning with books by Daphne Du Maurier. Bert had made all decorating decisions because she was too young to understand good taste. Throughout their marriage she continued to stand a distance behind him on the road to maturity, not permitted to make decisions more pressing than the arrangement of the kitchen cupboards.
During the past two years she’d secretly considered leaving. Pack her things and go. But to where? Her parents were dead. She couldn’t go to Bernice; she would’ve connived for reconciliation. And Angie had become so firmly stitched into the weave of Bert’s life that her only friends had first been his.
While rifling through closets, she came across boxes stashed away throughout the years. These held her needlework projects: crocheting, knitting and cross stitching, all shrouded within layers of tissue paper. “That stuff,” Bert would sneer, believing anything made by hand to be worthless.
Angie opened the boxes. Doilies long hidden in the darkness floated like bubbles of surf. Whites and creams shone next to vibrant mauves and pinks edged with crimson and fuchsia roses. Her hands tingled when she bore the doilies from room to room, deciding where to put them.
The last room Angie looked into was Bert’s study. For a full minute, she stared at the computer monitor where he would spend much of his time working budgets, keeping track of markets and planning her weekly to-do lists. Over the monitor she draped a pink doily then snatched it back, left the room and shut the door.
It was from behind this door four days later, she heard him call out. She froze, the familiar dread clutching her arms. “You’re not there, Bert, you’re not.” And then, unconsciously quoting her late mother: “And that’s the end of that.”
He didn’t call her again. He showed up.
One evening, after showering and combing out her long hair, she re-entered the bedroom to see the silhouette of his shoulder beneath the bed covers. She fled to the bathroom and locked the door. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she yelled, “You get out of the bed, Bert, and don’t come back.”
When two men arrived and removed the king-sized bed from the house, she quickly shut the door, afraid Bert would somehow leap from the mattress and hurl himself inside.
The first night in her new bed she dreamt she cradled something in her lap, while stitching with a darning needle and heavy black thread. She awoke, shivering, with the realization that it was Bert’s shrunken head, and she’d been sewing his mouth shut.
Angie didn’t dare admit any of this to Bernice. After their parents died together in a car accident, Bernice went into therapy and came out of it considering herself to be an expert on grief. She was already launching an assault on Angie’s refusal to communicate her feelings.
A month after Bert’s burial, she insisted she and Angie resume their ritual Saturday morning visits, and arrived at her doorstep bringing pastry from the coffee shop where she worked as baker. Angie led Bernice to the kitchen, using the hallway opposite the living room because she wasn’t yet ready to face Bernice about having replaced the hunter green furniture with a pink chintz sofa and love seat.
They drank tea and talked about the wet weather while Angie waited for Bernice to manoeuvre the conversation toward the real estate market.
“You’d get a good price for this place.”
Angie saw a future of Saturday teas aimed at her like bullets bursting from an automatic weapon. “I'm not selling.” Giving up her home would complete Item #17 on Bert’s list. Using his life
She’d no reason to believe this. During their courting and marriage, he hadn’t once copied out a poem or left her any scribbled endearments, so it wasn’t a surprise the history yielded nothing, as did The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the How to Make the Money You Always Dreamed Of Making.
Angie filled the shelves with her own books, beginning with books by Daphne Du Maurier. Bert had made all decorating decisions because she was too young to understand good taste. Throughout their marriage she continued to stand a distance behind him on the road to maturity, not permitted to make decisions more pressing than the arrangement of the kitchen cupboards.
During the past two years she’d secretly considered leaving. Pack her things and go. But to where? Her parents were dead. She couldn’t go to Bernice; she would’ve connived for reconciliation. And Angie had become so firmly stitched into the weave of Bert’s life that her only friends had first been his.
While rifling through closets, she came across boxes stashed away throughout the years. These held her needlework projects: crocheting, knitting and cross stitching, all shrouded within layers of tissue paper. “That stuff,” Bert would sneer, believing anything made by hand to be worthless.
Angie opened the boxes. Doilies long hidden in the darkness floated like bubbles of surf. Whites and creams shone next to vibrant mauves and pinks edged with crimson and fuchsia roses. Her hands tingled when she bore the doilies from room to room, deciding where to put them.
The last room Angie looked into was Bert’s study. For a full minute, she stared at the computer monitor where he would spend much of his time working budgets, keeping track of markets and planning her weekly to-do lists. Over the monitor she draped a pink doily then snatched it back, left the room and shut the door.
It was from behind this door four days later, she heard him call out. She froze, the familiar dread clutching her arms. “You’re not there, Bert, you’re not.” And then, unconsciously quoting her late mother: “And that’s the end of that.”
He didn’t call her again. He showed up.
One evening, after showering and combing out her long hair, she re-entered the bedroom to see the silhouette of his shoulder beneath the bed covers. She fled to the bathroom and locked the door. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she yelled, “You get out of the bed, Bert, and don’t come back.”
When two men arrived and removed the king-sized bed from the house, she quickly shut the door, afraid Bert would somehow leap from the mattress and hurl himself inside.
The first night in her new bed she dreamt she cradled something in her lap, while stitching with a darning needle and heavy black thread. She awoke, shivering, with the realization that it was Bert’s shrunken head, and she’d been sewing his mouth shut.
Angie didn’t dare admit any of this to Bernice. After their parents died together in a car accident, Bernice went into therapy and came out of it considering herself to be an expert on grief. She was already launching an assault on Angie’s refusal to communicate her feelings.
A month after Bert’s burial, she insisted she and Angie resume their ritual Saturday morning visits, and arrived at her doorstep bringing pastry from the coffee shop where she worked as baker. Angie led Bernice to the kitchen, using the hallway opposite the living room because she wasn’t yet ready to face Bernice about having replaced the hunter green furniture with a pink chintz sofa and love seat.
They drank tea and talked about the wet weather while Angie waited for Bernice to manoeuvre the conversation toward the real estate market.
“You’d get a good price for this place.”
Angie saw a future of Saturday teas aimed at her like bullets bursting from an automatic weapon. “I'm not selling.” Giving up her home would complete Item #17 on Bert’s list. Using his life
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