The Doctor's Wife Read Online Free Page B

everybody.
    â€œTell us about Uncle Jack and the skunk,” Chrissy asks.
    â€œOne day when your Uncle Jack was a boy he found an orphaned baby skunk and decided he’d bring it home. He thought that since the skunk was young its glands wouldn’t be developed.”
    â€œDid he get sprayed?”
    â€œHe came back covered with the smell of skunk.”
    â€œDid you give him a tomato bath?”
    â€œWe tried. The smell never really went away until his hair grew out.”
    â€œHe really took a bath in tomato juice?”
    â€œWe used huge cans.”
    â€œDid he ever keep snakes in the basement?”
    â€œOne time I was having a luncheon and I noticed snakes on the valence in the dining room.”
    â€œWhat did you do?”
    â€œI moved on to coffee and dessert as quickly as I could without being rude.” Her grandmother fixes her with a stare. “You know all these stories.”
    â€œHe’s a professor of zoology?” Chrissy asks. She loves the word zoo.
    â€œYour uncle loves animals, just like you.”
    â€œJust like me,” Chrissy says.

Sandy Beach Drive
    â€œHey dear, Petie and I bought a house today!” the Doctor had said to her. She’d propped herself up in the hospital bed, newborn Chrissy at her breast.
    â€œYou did what?”
    â€œIt’s on the lake,” he’d said, sounding pleased with himself. At the time, she’d wondered if she was hearing properly. She’d wondered if giving birth had addled her brain and she was having a small hallucination.
    â€œIt was built by a Norwegian doctor,” Petie added. Petie thinks the Doctor is the best man who ever lived. The Doctor’s Wife thinks this too, naturally, and at the time, she hadn’t really cared what the house looked like. All of a sudden she’d had three kids to take care of and so it didn’t matter that she’d loved Cherry Acres, the place they’d rented from the Manning family. Cherry Acres sat at the top of the hill, five acres of orchards overlooking the lake. The Doctor’s Wife is not a person who needs to live on the water. She prefers a long view.

Bond Issue II
    The second time Nancy and the Doctor’s Wife go on TV, they’ve prepared a formal speech. The Doctor’s Wife wears a tweed suit. The children are once again thrilled, and it seems like the vote will pass with no trouble.
    â€œI think we did it,” the Doctor’s Wife says to Nancy.
    â€œYou need to know how to yell and stomp your feet to get things done. We’re good at that,” Nancy says.
    The day before the vote, a local businessman distributes flyers that distort how much people will have to pay, and the bond issue fails by sixty votes.

Birth
    It is Thanksgiving of 1958. Petie and J.W., Ann’s grandfather, are staying with them to help out. Petie cooks everything, the turkey, the stuffing, two kinds of pies. But Ann is too excited to eat.
    â€œYou have a little brother,” the Doctor says when he comes home from the hospital.
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œJohn.”
    Ann is the first kid to hold him. His eyes are closed like a little puppy’s. Chrissy hovers nearby, but Ann doesn’t want to give him up.

Take Your Son
    The first time the Doctor takes Bob fishing he makes a big breakfast of oatmeal, bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. It’s four-thirty in the morning and they need to get to the Skykomish as dawn breaks. If they’re not there at the right time the fishing will be ruined. It can’t be too dark, not too bright, not too cold, not too windy, but this seems like a perfect sort of morning, gray skies, calm.
    The Doctor usually fishes alone. He has a few fishing buddies, but he wouldn’t tell his best friend about a good steelhead run. The thing he likes about fishing is the solitude. He likes going into a sort of concentrated trance in which problems get worked out by being placed to the