Absolution by Alice McDermott

Author:Alice McDermott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

* * *

THUS WAS OUR PROJECT not only conceived but made inevitable in that conversation on the roof of the Caravelle.

Charlene told me later that the whole idea, the idea to bring lovely new clothes to the lepers, had probably been somewhere in the back of her head, in her unconscious, she said, but it had only sprung to the forefront when she heard Marilee’s perfectly rational argument against our altruism.

“My first impulse was to screw my cigarette into her face,” Charlene said later. “She was so smug. Lecturing me about the Vietnamese economy. But then I thought, well, poor, homely Marilee is as much a product of her birth, her genes, her confining circumstances, as she’s right now saying the Vietnamese are. I thought, you know, she probably dresses this way—I mean, that blouse—because she doesn’t believe her homely face and dimpled biceps deserve better. Probably married the major for the same reason. I thought, listening to her go on, that something in silk might improve her outlook. An ao dai for Marilee, I thought. Despite that face. Despite those linebacker’s shoulders. And then I thought of the lepers. And then I was telling her about your wonderful plan, which, I’m afraid, I’d just hatched.”

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