Evergreen by Belva Plain

Author:Belva Plain [Plain, Belva]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780899668130
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1978-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

28

Joseph and his reflection traveled down Madison Avenue together, going back to the office. Whenever he looked away from the afternoon press of taxis and buses, whenever a glass door swung open or a flame of opalescent sunlight struck a window, he saw a vigorous man in a gray suit walking fast, swinging his arms. He hadn’t realized how high his arms swung.

He was in good shape. Didn’t look his age. In the morning, after waking automatically at six, he did his calisthenics. He watched his diet, although not stringently: he didn’t run to fat. Anna was envious; she would go for days on cottage cheese and salads to keep thin. A little weight wouldn’t hurt her, he always said, and was told that his tastes were old-fashioned. Well, at fifty-five, why shouldn’t they be?

Still, that wasn’t old these days. It was hard to think that his father had been only two years older when he died, worn away, shuffling and bereft of will. That was the main thing, will. You got old when you lost it.

He ought to be, and he was, thankful down to the marrow that he hadn’t lost his. He’d been able to build again from the ruins, or at least to make a promising start. It wasn’t given to everyone to have a second chance. Poor Solly. Ruth was living now in three rooms that Joseph had let her have in that very first apartment house on the Heights, the one for which Anna had borrowed the money. That house, he admitted with amusement, was a foolish kind of talisman to him. He didn’t suppose he’d ever sell it. Anyway, Ruth was living there. She paid a small rent. He would have given it to her for nothing, but she wouldn’t accept that and he admired her refusal. He would have done the same if the circumstances had been reversed. God forbid.

Waiting at Fifty-sixth Street for the light to change, he was shocked into a reminder of sadness by a window that still displayed the black-bordered photograph of Roosevelt, dead two weeks. It was a personal grief, the death of this President. A solemn grief: the funeral train from Georgia, the slow march down Pennsylvania Avenue, the horse with stirrups reversed. Symbolism of the fallen warrior. A brave man. He felt he would miss that man, his fine confident voice on the radio.

Yet there were people who had hated him … and not the very rich alone, those who thought of him as a traitor to his class! Joseph knew a workman who had lost twin sons in the war; he blamed Roosevelt, said we should never have gotten into the war. But that was nonsense; frantic, bitter, ranting. Understandable, but ranting all the same. Malone had lost a son-in-law, Irene’s husband, killed at Iwo Jima, and now Irene had come back home with her two babies … not an easy thing for the Malones, what with teen-agers of their own still at home, but they never complained.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.