A Love of Reading, the Second Collection by Robert Adams

Author:Robert Adams [Adams, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-448-2
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2003-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

Doc sometimes dreams of the business they could have built together if Sunny had never run away, but now he classes that dream of togetherness with his youthful desire to be Japanese, with his enlisting in the Japanese army, with his desire to be accepted in Bedley Run, with his lifetime of obsession with belonging, with what he now sees as “my long folly, my continuous failure.” (p. 205)

He is more convinced than ever that any association with him will result in disaster for the other person: “I’m at the vortex of bad happenings, and I am almost sure I ought to festoon the facade of my house and the bumpers of my car and then garland my shoulders with immense black flags of warning, to let every soul know they must steer clear of this man.” (p. 333)

But now there is some slight chance of happiness. Not for himself, but for Sunny and little Thomas. To further that end, he will now accede to the persistent urgings of his friend Olivia Crawford — surely the most persistent of all realtors — and sell his house. Together with his savings, that should give him enough to achieve two objectives. The first will be to save from bankruptcy the young man who bought his business. The man has lost both wife and child, and Doc has not freed himself totally from the need to make gestures of generosity.

Far more important, Doc will set Sunny up in his old business premises, with a flat above, to run whatever business she pleases.

And with what remains, if Liv is right and all goes well, I’ll have just enough to go away from here and live out modestly the rest of my unappointed days. Perhaps I’ll travel to where Sunny wouldn’t go, to the south and west and maybe farther still, across the oceans, to land on former shores. But I think it won’t be any kind of pilgrimage. I won’t be seeking out my destiny or fate. I won’t attempt to find comfort in the visage of a creator or the forgiving dead.

Let me simply bear my flesh, and blood, and bones. I will fly a flag. Tomorrow, when this house is alive and full, I will be outside looking in. I will be already on a walk someplace, in this town or the next or one five thousand miles away. I will circle round and arrive again. Come almost home. (pp. 355-56)

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