Roses, Rhododendron by Alice Adams

Author:Alice Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

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“Well,” said Margot, settling into a Queen Anne chair—a new antique—on our porch one stifling hot July morning, “I heard some really interesting gossip about your friends.”

Margot had met and admired Harriet, and Harriet liked her, too—Margot made Harriet laugh, and she praised Harriet’s fine brown hair. But on some instinct (I am not sure whose) the parents had not met. Very likely, Emily, with her Southern social antennae, had somehow sensed that this meeting would be a mistake.

That morning, Harriet and I were going on a picnic in the woods to the steep rocky side of Laurel Hill, but I forced myself to listen, or half listen, to Margot’s story.

“Well, it seems that some years ago Lawrence Farr fell absolutely madly in love with a beautiful young girl—in fact, the orphaned daughter of a friend of his. Terribly romantic. Of course, she loved him, too, but he felt so awful and guilty that they never did anything about it.”

I did not like this story much; it made me obscurely uncomfortable, and I think that at some point both Margot and I wondered why she was telling it. Was she pointing out imperfections in my chosen other family? But I asked, in Harriet’s indifferent voice, “He never kissed her?”

“Well, maybe. I don’t know. But of course everyone in town knew all about it, including Emily Farr. And with her back! Poor woman,” Margot added somewhat piously but with real feeling, too.

I forgot the story readily at the time. For one thing, there was something unreal about anyone as old as Lawrence Farr “falling in love.” But looking back to Emily’s face, Emily looking at Lawrence, I can see that pained watchfulness of a woman who has been hurt, and by a man who could always hurt her again.

In those days, what struck me most about the Farrs was their extreme courtesy to each other—something I had not seen before. Never a harsh word. (Of course, I did not know then about couples who cannot afford a single harsh word.)

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