Taking Care by Joy Williams

Author:Joy Williams [Williams, Joy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-14T20:00:00+00:00

“Look now,” Judy said, peeling off a strip of Scotch tape from her bangs, “we’ve got to broaden our conversational base. Why don’t we talk about men or movies? Or even mixed drinks?”

Julep shrugged. “We don’t know anything about those things.” She looked at the black worn Bible on her bedside table. She had read there that the sun would someday become black as a sackcloth of hair and the moon would turn red as blood. This was because of the evil in people, and Julep worried that this would happen to the sun before she had a chance to get back to where it was again.

“You don’t know anything is all.” Judy plucked at her sweater and smiled the bittersweet smile she found so crushing on the lips of the girl models of the fashion magazines. Her new breasts rose and fell eerily beneath a sweater of puce.

“I know that someday you’re gonna poke someone’s eye out with those things,” Julep said pointing at her friend’s chest. “If I were you, I’d be worried sick.”

Judy yawned. Julep stared out the window. The sun was still up but nowhere in sight. The air was blue and the snow falling through it was blue, and the trees were as black as though they had been burned.

“I’m leaving,” Judy said abruptly and swept out of Julep’s bedroom and downstairs to the kitchen.

Julep rubbed at the frost forming inside the windowpane with a thin grey nail which was bleeding beneath the quick. She felt her head sweating. If she pressed her hands to it, it would pop like a too heavy tick on a dog. If Hell were hot then Heaven must be freezing cold. She backed away from the window and thudded down the stairs.

Judy had drawn on her boots and coat. She waved coyly at Julep.

“Well, aren’t we going over there tonight to watch him?” Julep asked nervously, swinging her eyes heavily toward her friend. Looking often cost Julep a great deal of effort as though her eyes were boxes of bricks she had to push around in front of her.

“No,” Judy said, for she wanted to punish Julep for her dullness. Her books were lying on the kitchen table beside a small dish that said LET ME HOLD YOUR TEABAG. Judy rolled her eyes and then shook her head at Julep. Julep’s father owned a little grocery and variety store down the street, and in the window of it was a hand-lettered sign.

WHY MAKE THE RICH RICHER

PATRONIZE THE POOR

THANK YOU

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