Marry Me Read Online Free

summering in the Cascades. She went upstairs to change, and this nostalgic ferny fragrance, persisting through the bedroom window, intersected the faintly corrupt tang of salt water on her bathing suit. Sally bundled and pinned her hair. Alone in her bathroom, she conjured up Jerry; she gave the air his eyes. In making love his first motion was always to remove herhairpins and in the daily details of her toilet she seemed to bend close to him, sharing with him his careful love of her body.
    She mixed a thermos of lemonade, scolded the boys into their bathing suits, and got into the car. The Saab had lately developed a reluctance to start, so she parked it pointed downhill and used momentum to turn the engine over. Josie was laboriously pushing the baby carriage, with a bag of groceries propped at Theodora’s feet, up the driveway as Sally coasted down; she had reached the steep place where Sally let out the clutch. The women could exchange only frightened looks in the precarious moment as the spark ignited and the engine jerked into power. Sally felt that Josie had something to ask her, something about meals or naps, but Josie knew the routine as well as she – better, because she was less distracted, was middle-aged and past love.
    Under the tranquillizing June sun the Sound was a smooth plane reflecting the command, Don’t go. She led Peter and Bobby well down the beach. Sally thought she spotted Ruth in the pack of mothers at the other end, and Bobby said, ‘I want to go play with Charlie Conant.’
    ‘You can find him after we get settled,’ Sally said. She discovered herself crying again; she didn’t notice until her cheeks registered the wetness. Don’t go. Everything agreed on this – the grains of sand, the chorus of particles alive on the water, the wary glances of her sons, the distant splashes and shouts that came to her when she lay down and closed her eyes, like the smooth clatter of an ethereal sewing machine. Don’t go, you can’t go, you are here. The unanimity was wonderful. He didn’twant her to go, he thought a night with her was nothing, he told her she was crucifying herself, he said it would not be as good as the first time. She grew furious with him. Her breathing felt oppressed under the tyranny of the sun; a rough touch gouged and abraded the skin of her exposed midriff, and she opened her eyes prepared to scream. Peter had brought her a crab claw, weathered and fragrant. ‘Don’t go, Mommy’ he pleaded, holding out close to her eyes his fragile dead gift. Her ears must be deceiving her.
    ‘It’s lovely, sweetie. Don’t put it in your mouth. Now go away and play with Bobby.’
    ‘Bobby hates me.’
    ‘Don’t be silly, darling, he likes you very much, he just doesn’t know how to show it. Now please go away and let Mommy think.’
    Of course she shouldn’t go. As Jerry said, they had been lucky the first time. Richard had been on one of his trips. Jerry had waited for her at National Airport and they had taken a taxi into Washington. Their taxi driver, a solemn tea-coloured man who drove his cab with a proprietorial gentleness, had noticed the quality of their silence and asked if they wanted to go through the park, around the Tidal Basin, to see the cherry trees. Jerry told him yes. The trees were in blossom, pink, mauve, salmon, white; tremblingly Jerry’s fingers kept revolving Richard’s wedding ring on her finger. A black nurse was playing catch with some small boys in a shady clearing and the smallest of them held out his hands and the ball fell untouched at his feet. The hotel lobby was dark-carpeted and rich with Southern accents. With a lowering of his eyelashes the desk clerk accepted heras Mrs Conant. Perhaps her face had been too radiant. Their room had white walls and framed flower prints, and looked out on an airshaft. Jerry shaved with a brush and soap bowl, which she would not have guessed. She thought all men used electric razors, because Richard did. Nor would