The Wide Circumference of Love by Marita Golden

Author:Marita Golden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2017-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

When Diane entered the house a few hours later, she found Bruce sitting on the sofa in the family room beside Gregory. Bruce had volunteered a week ago to stay with Gregory sometimes if she wanted to go out.

He stood up the moment she entered, tossing his head back and his eyes to the ceiling. “How do you do it? Handle him, I mean? He kept talking about some meeting that he and Mercer had with the mayor years ago and keeps telling the same story over and over.”

Diane checked her desire to tell her brother-in-law to stop talking about Gregory as though he wasn’t present or as if he were deaf. “What’ve you two been doing?”

“Watching the History Channel,” Bruce said reaching for his jacket and striding quickly toward the front door. Clutching the doorknob and avoiding Diane’s gaze, he stammered, “We ate something, and he got to walking all over the house. I had to follow him to make sure he was okay. He took a nap and woke up as soon as I settled down for a rest of my own. He wanted a glass of water and then knocked it on the floor. In desperation, I hoped the television would calm him down. Diane, I had no idea.”

“The symptoms seem to worsen in the evening and at night.”

“My offer still stands, but I need time to kind of recover, you know.”

Then, in a move that was both awkward and unexpected, Bruce leaned forward and kissed Diane on the cheek before hurrying through the door.

Diane locked the door, kicked off her shoes, and walked into the living room where she found Gregory staring at the television screen, watching the erection of the Brooklyn Bridge unfold. As she got closer she could hear him mumbling, his fingers drumming the arm of the sofa.

“When I finally got down to the district building Mercer was fuming,” Gregory said. “Pacing up and down. Back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the building. I was late because I’d spent the night before tossing and turning and didn’t get to sleep until five o’clock in the morning, and our meeting was at ten o’clock. Well, he starts to light into me and then I tell him to save it, and we rush up the stairs back into the building.”

Gregory laughed loud, a hearty bellow, and clapped his hands. Suddenly aware of Diane’s presence he turned to face her and, buoyed by her presence, he continued, “We cool our heels for another half hour, all the while going over the presentation. This is make or break for us. The chance to design the first office building in the U Street corridor since the riots. Our chance to make something rise from the ashes. When we get called into his office, he walks over to us like he’s honored that we came. I’ll never forget what he said: ‘Come on in, brothers. Come on in.’ Like me and Mercer grew up with him down there in Itta Bena, Mississippi, picking cotton.

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