The Wives of Bath Read Online Free Page B

and his persistence principle was an old favourite of mine. I used to read his column in
Life
magazine with the same intensity that Sal read herfavourite feature in
The Ladies’ Home Journal
, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Once I made the mistake of consulting Reverend Peale about Morley.
    Dear Mr. Peale,
    Sal and I have tried every way we know to perswade my father to take a full day off for Christmas. He hardly ever vacations. He is an elderly man and is not as young as he used to be. I am afraid he may dye from an attack of overwork, PLEASE give me some advise.
    Hopefully yours,
Mary Beatrice
    I didn’t get an answer for two whole years, and I knew I’d got the address right: 488 Madison Avenue, New York, New York. Then I found my letter in Sal’s corsage cupboard, and my big ears burned over the laugh she and Morley must have had about it. I didn’t say a word to her about the letter. I slipped it into my pocket, and later I corrected the spelling mistakes and sent it off. Soon enough, Reverend Peale wrote back.
    Dear Miss Bradford,
    Keep working on your father. Remember! Plugging away will win the day.
    Yours,
Norman
    His answer should have made me feel better but I never wrote to him again.
    Morley was doing a very Morley-like thing, revving the engine of the Olds. It wasn’t a good omen for me. Morley usually revved a car when he was uncomfortable.
    Finally, between a long
vroom-vroom-vroom
, he said: “You’re a good old girl, aren’t you, Mouse?”
    Morley only called me a good old girl when he wanted something from me. And for a tenth of a second, his big, sad eyes found mine in the mirror. I nodded without thinking. Relieved, he lumbered out of the Olds and walked around to open the door for Sal. It was embarrassing the way Morley forgot about my presence. He stood in front of the school, grinning down at Sal as she tottered out of the car on her spike heels. She caught her balance, and in perfect “A”-mood form, the little flirt smiled up at her great god Morley.
    I prayed in the back seat that Morley would look over at me and say he’d reconsider. Oh, Morley, I muttered, if you take me back home, I’ll worship you like Sal. I’ll even rush over to you with the Madoc’s Landing
Bulletin
, the way the nurses do when you walk through the door of Lennox Street General. Yes, cross my heart and hope to die, I’m ready, like Sal and all the others, to serve the legendary Morley Bradford, the tallest doctor in Guilford Township—six feet seven inches in his stocking feet. A giant who stays up all night playing poker with the boys at the Grand and then operates next morning fresh as a daisy. Morley, please. If you do me this favour, I’ll be as devoted to you as I am to President Kennedy.
    But standing on the steps of Bath Ladies College, Morley looked like he always did: a big Morley balloon who’d float away if he weren’t anchored to the ground by a pair of huge oxblood wing tips. The rest of my father, starting with the wide cuffs of his baggy grey flannels, billowed upwards out of my reach. Morley was a human dirigible growing in volume through the vested midriff and ending far above me in a big distracted balloon head. His smoky blue eyes were fixed on a spot on the horizon I couldn’t see.
    Then Sal pointed at me and Morley did a double take. Hemumbled, “Oh, there you are, Mouse,” as if I had deliberately disappeared from view when I fumbled with my door handle. I glanced down, as if I didn’t mind him overlooking me, and handed out my crutches. Then slowly, very slowly, I swung my feeble legs out of the car.

4
    “To dig a hole, you must use a spade properly. Push with the ball of your instep—the ridge just behind your toes. See, Sergeant, how I hold the spade with one hand and kick it once into the ground?”
    In a grove of elms, a large, white-haired woman was showing an odd little man how to dig a garden. She was twice his size and dressed in strange clothes for gardening—a