Anne Tyler by Earthly Possessions

Author:Earthly Possessions [Possessions, Earthly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-25T00:13:59.312000+00:00

For the clapping had stopped by now. There was some understanding between players and audience; each pretended the other wasn't there. Well finally the parade resumed and so did the clapping, and the audience was filled with admiration all over again as if by appointment. The players marched on. Their legs flashed as steadily and evenly as scissors. I was sorry not to have them to watch any more. "I would think a drum would be a right good instrument," Jake told me, gazing after them. "You just like whatever booms and damages," said Mindy. We looked at her. "Oh! I was going to do my billfold trick," Jake said, "No, thank you." "Now, where's my... shoot, my billfold." "Never mind," said Mindy. "Lend me your billfold, Charlotte," Jake said. I pulled it out of my purse and gave it to him, meanwhile watching a floatful of white-wigged men signing a paper that was scorched around the edges. "Look close, now," Jake said to Mindy. "Maybe you'll figure how I do it, finally. Here we have a empty billfold, see? Observe there ain't no tricks to this, no hidden pockets, secret compartments ..." I heard him riffling through it, flicking the plastic windows, snapping up some flap. There was a sudden silence. "Why," he said. "Why, what have we here. Charlotte? Charlotte, what is this?" I took my eyes away from the parade and looked at what he held out. "It's a traveler's check," I told him. "A traveler's check! Looky there, Mindy, a hundred-dollar traveler's check! We're rich! Why didn't you tell me?" he asked. "What kind of sneaky way is that to act?" "I don't know. I didn't think," I said. "Didn't think? Carrying around a hundred dollars and didn't think?'' "Well, I've had it for so long, you see. I mean I had it for just one purpose, I forgot it could be used for anything else," "What in hell purpose was that?" Jake asked. "Why, for traveling," I said. "Charlotte," Jake told me, "we are traveling." "Oh," I said. Twelve. When Belinda was little, I tried to tell her the truth as much as possible. I told her that as far as I knew, when people die they die and that's the end of it. But after church one day she asked, "How come you and me just die and other people get to go to heaven?" "Well, there you are," I told her. "You can take your choice." Selinda chose heaven. I didn't blame her. She went to all those extras that I stayed home from: prayer meetings, Family Night, and so forth. I began to notice her absence. She was seven now and a whole separate person. Well, she always had been, really, but I thought of seven as the age when people come into their full identity. Sometimes it seemed to me that my own seven-year-old self was still looking out of its grownup hull, wary but unblinking. I asked Selinda, "Will you remember to pay me a visit now and then?" "I live here," Selinda said.

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