Sea Glass: A Novel by Anita Shreve

Author:Anita Shreve
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Depressions, Historical, Married people, Fiction, Literary, Massacres, New Hampshire, Historical fiction, Labor movement, 1929, Stock Market Crash, FIC014000, Domestic fiction
ISBN: 9780316780810
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2002-04-09T07:00:35+00:00

Honora

Honora drives through the marshes, shaking her head. She can’t imagine why she told that man that she wanted a baby, nor why she touched his hand. It’s because of Christmas, she decides; it makes you do impulsive things — like telling Vivian she’d drive her to the airport. She’s glad she did; it was good to get out of the house. She thinks about the boy, his possessiveness, his pride. The rapt expression on his face at the airport. His grin when the man gave him the present. The way the man had to look at her, to watch her speak her words.

She hopes now that Sexton isn’t too upset that she wasn’t there to greet him. She will explain, and she is certain that he will understand. She steers the beach wagon around a corner, waiting for the sight of the house and the Buick parked out front, but when she completes the turn, she is so startled by what she sees — or, rather, by what she doesn’t see — that she inadvertently takes her foot off the clutch and stalls the automobile.

There are no lights on in the house, and the Buick isn’t there.

She tells herself that Sexton has gone out to the store to buy coffee. That he has run out of gas and has had to walk to a filling station. That there were too many cars on Route 1, and he had no way to get in touch with her. That he left her present on a counter in a department store and had to go back to find it.

She doesn’t believe a word of it.

She puts the car in gear and completes the turn. She parks in front of the house, where normally the Buick would be. She steps up onto the granite slab. The door is shiny in the moonlight. She moves into the hallway and thinks of the first time she and Sexton ever entered this house. The hallway is brighter now, the peeling wallpaper with the liveried servants gone, replaced by lemon paint. The electric sconces on the wall now work with the flick of a switch. The house no longer smells of mildew, and she doesn’t think as often about the other people who lived here before her. She puts her coat over a hook and enters the kitchen. The windows are clean, the indoor shutters painted, the grime of years long removed. The oven door opens without the screech and bang now, and the water flows smoothly from the tap.

The sound of surf inside her head makes it hard to think. She sits at the table and runs her hands over the embroidered linen. The tea things are still in the sink; nothing has been touched. Sexton did not come home and then go out again for a pint of milk. He did not come home at all.

She glances up at the cuckoo clock on the wall. Ten past six. She runs the water and begins to rinse out the cups.

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