A Certain Age Read Online Free

feels the same way about you?”
    â€œI hope so. I’ve asked her father for permission, and he said yes.”
    â€œBut the girl, Ox. What does the girl say? It’s more or less the crux of the whole business, isn’t it?”
    â€œWell, I haven’t asked her yet. But I think she’ll agree.” He gnaws another chunk from his bread. “I’m sure she’ll agree. She’s the sweetest thing, sis.”
    â€œAnd blind, obviously.”
    â€œNow, sis—”
    â€œAnd rich. She’s got to be rich.”
    â€œSis.”
    From the downcasting of his eyelashes, I can see I’ve hit the nail straight on its bent old head. I say tenderly, “She’s got to be rich, hasn’t she, or you’d just do what you always do, when the love beetle nibbles.”
    â€œNo, no. This time I really mean it.”
    â€œOf course you do. I’m sure she’s a sweet, lovely girl, and her money has nothing to do with it.” I pause. “How much has she got?”
    â€œI don’t know, exactly.” He leans against the wall, on the other side of the roof beam that slopes away from the dresser.
    â€œOh yes you do. Down to the plug nickel, I’ll bet.”
    The coals have begun to catch on, and the stove is getting hot, though not so much that my icy bones are inclined to step away. Ox is examining the floor now, and his arms are folded, the way he used to look when we were children and he’d been caught in some kind of mischief. The slope ofhis shoulders suggests confession. “Her father’s got a patent on something or other, something that speeds up the manufacture of industrial . . . industrial . . .” He screws up his eyes.
    â€œDon’t hurt yourself. I’ve got the general idea. How much are we talking about? Thousands?”
    He looks up, and his eyes are a little sparky. “Millions.”
    â€œ What?”
    â€œHe licenses the design out, you know, and the revenue from that alone is one and a half million dollars a year, give or take a hundred thousand—”
    I clutch the roof beam.
    â€œâ€”which is pure profit, you know, because he doesn’t have to make the—the thingamajig himself. They just pay him for the design. It’s patented .” He pronounces the word patented with triumphant emphasis, as he might say gold-plated.
    â€œYes, Ox, darling. I understand what a patent is.” In the midst of my beam-clutching shock, the shawl has sagged away from my shoulders. I resume both balance and composure and tuck myself back in while these extraordinary numbers harden into round marbles and roll, glimmering, back and forth across the surface of my mind. How could a man invent a single object and then vault—vault with such marvelous, casual ease!—over the accumulated wealth of no less than Mr. Thomas Sylvester Marshall of Fifth Avenue, whose father once supplied the entire Union Army with canned ham? A wealth that had dazzled me at seventeen. The company had naturally been sold in the seventies—canned ham being incompatible with the social aspirations of so keenly ambitious a woman as Mrs. Thomas Sylvester Marshall, my mother-in-law—and the proceeds invested in such a manner that a passive two hundred thousand dollars—give or take ten thousand—still drift gently into the Marshall coffers each year, enough to keep us all in silks and horses and ennui. But two hundred thousand is not one million five hundred thousand. A patent: well, that’s a different kind of capital altogether. A patent suggests activity. Suggests having actually earned something.
    I take the soft fringe of the shawl and rub it between my thumb and forefinger, in much the same way that the Boy caresses my hair. “Gracious me. She’s quite a catch, then. Pretty and sweet and loaded. Does she have anyone to share all this lovely money with?”
    â€œAn older sister. Virginia. She’s