Recessional: A Novel by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804151573
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

When Dr. Zorn had first asked Miss Foxworth to show him the confidential list of residents in Gateways whose rents had been lowered so that they could continue living in the Palms even though their investment income had dropped, he noted one name that was vaguely familiar to him. He learned from Miss Foxworth that Harry Ingram was a seventy-two-year-old man who lived off by himself in one of the smallest and least expensive units, and she characterized him as ‘that dear little mouse of a man.’

Zorn, eager to understand all aspects of retiree management, felt it his duty to seek out one of what someone had called ‘our zeros’ to see if he could guess why management had extended financial aid to him. So he asked Krenek to arrange a dining table at which he could be alone with Ingram, and when Harry arrived he found him to be quite unprepossessing: a smallish man, less than five five and weighing about a hundred and thirty-five pounds. He had gone bald at the top of his head but had trained the hair on the right side to spread sparsely over the bald spot and to remain there when held down by copious amounts of a heavy pomade. He did not like to look people in the eye, but did not stare down at the floor, as some did. He let his somewhat watery eyes wander from side to side, bringing them to rest at surprising times when he looked someone straight in the eye to make some trivial observation, which he delivered with a gravity more suited to the Gettysburg Address. When he did speak, it was with a slight British accent: ‘My grandfather emigrated from Scotland in 1870. He was thrown out really, bad blood in the family, and he became a remittance man in Nova Scotia, but he remained on the rolls of his home in Scotland, and always thought of himself as a Scot. When he had a son in Canada—my father, that is—he registered him at the empire office as a British citizen. But later, when my father grew tired of the cold winters he saved the money that still trickled in from home and moved to Illinois, where the weather was better and where he met a farmer’s daughter who owned a bit of land in her own name. Our name was really Ingraham, but when he entered the United States an immigration official said: “Now, that’s silly. If it’s pronounced Ingram, that’s the way we’ll spell it in God’s country.” And Ingrams we became. He never went back to Scotland nor have any of us, but we celebrate Robbie Burns Day in January and we have a few Victrola records of bagpipe music, dreadful stuff.’ It had been a long speech for him, so he felt no obligation to converse the rest of the evening.

It had been a dull visit, so Zorn would have been surprised if, when he left the table, someone had

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.