Disobedience by Jane Hamilton

Author:Jane Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780385721752
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2002-03-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

At dinner that night after our trip to Wisconsin, my father was talking about the concept of moving from forty-minute class periods to block scheduling at Jesse Layton. He was intrigued by the idea and seemed to be thinking out loud how he’d manage a ninety-minute history class for freshmen, how he’d keep them active, keep them thinking, keep them awake. He did not believe in using movies during class time, because, as I’ve said, he was a throwback. My mother wasn’t listening to his ruminations, but as usual she had the look on her face of attentiveness. When her piano career goes to hell, she can play hags and queens, she can do Shakespeare in the Park. Elvira may have been pondering the afternoon, including the novel experience of having been a good girl. She was understandably quiet through supper, eating slowly, staring at her plate, chewing, reflecting.

Again we were in our places of the moment, what seemed to me our rightful places, the four of us in our house at 432 Roslyn, and in the outer world, Richard Polloco was sitting at his table eating dinner by himself or possibly with Miss Lucille Van Heusen. My mother should not be counted fully present in our circle. Still, we had her in a certain way. If she meant her body for Polloco, she had it wrong. Her physical self in the kitchen was ours, and it was a small thing, I thought, that if her mind was tending toward Tribbey, let it go, let it be gone.

Our narrow brownstone had four stories. The basement was nicely finished, but it was filled with junk and the Civil War equipment. The kitchen and living and dining rooms were on the first floor, the office, bath and my parents’ room were on the second, and Elvira and I had our rooms in the attic. The patch of ground in the back was nothing but a tangle of ivy. What the house lacked in width was made up for in high ceilings, so although the building had an old-fashioned grace, it was drafty and uncomfortable in winter. We hardly ever ate our meals in the dining room because it was cold and, with the exception of holidays and book club nights, the table was never clear. That was the space where my father’s schoolwork was laid out, in addition to his books and miscellaneous papers that were all over the office, the room we shared. The living room was taken up by my mother’s grand piano and her shelves of music, one sofa, and a coffee table. Our neighborhood was filled with rich couples who were knocking the daylights out of their walls, putting in big blond kitchens with granite surfaces, ranges built into the islands. Even though Minty had paid for our brownstone, my parents didn’t have the money or time to strip the dark trim and cover the worn stairs with carpeting and paint over the olive green in the kitchen.

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