The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley

Author:Grace Paley [Paley, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature
ISBN: 9780140075571
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 1959-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

Mrs. Raftery is sometimes silly and sick from her private source of cheap wine. She expects John often.

“Honor your mother, what’s the matter with you, John?” she complains. “Honor. Honor.”

“Virginia dear,” she says. “You never wouldVe taken John away to Jersey hke Margaret. I wish he’d Ve married you.”

“You didn’t like me much in those days.”

“That’s a he,” she says. I know she’s a hypocrite, but no more than the rest of the world.

What is remarkable to me is that it doesn’t seem to conscience John as I thought it might. It is still hard to believe that a man who sends out the Ten Commandments every year for a Christmas card can be so easy buttoning and unbuttoning.

Of course we must be very careful not to wake the children or disturb the neighbors who will enjoy another person’s excitement just so far, and then the pleasure enrages them. We must be very careful for ourselves too, for when my husband comes back, realizing the babies are in school and everything easier, he won’t forgive me if I’ve started it all up again—noisy signs of hfe that are so much trouble to a man.

We haven’t seen him in two and a half years. Although people have suggested it, I do not want the pohce or Intelligence or a private eye or anyone to go after him to bring him back. I know that if he expected to stay away forever he would have written and said so. As it is, I just don’t know what evening, any time, he may appear. Sometimes, stumbling over a blockbuster of a dream at midnight, I wake up to vision his soft arrival.

He comes in the door with his old key. He gives me a strict look and says, “Well, you look older, Virginia.” “So do you,” I say, although he hasn’t changed a bit.

He settles in the kitchen because the children are asleep all over the rest of the house. I unknot his tie and offer him a cold sandwich. He raps my backside, paying attention to the bounce. I walk around him as though he were a Maypole, kissing as I go.

“I didn’t like the Army much,” he says. “Next time I think I might go join the Merchant Marine.”

“What army?” I say.

“It’s pretty much the same everywhere,” he says.

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” I say.

“I lost my cufiF link, goddamnit,” he says, and drops to the floor to look for it. I go down too on my knees, but I know he never had a cuff hnk in his life. Still I would do a lot for him.

“Got you off your feet that time,” he says, laughing. “Oh yes, I did.” And before I can even make myself half comfortable on that polka-dotted linoleum, he got onto me right where we were, and the truth is, we were so happy, we forgot the precautions.

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