Women Drinking Benedictine by Sharon Dilworth

Author:Sharon Dilworth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women Drinking Benedictine
ISBN: 978-1-4804-3610-7
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 1998-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

Pete and I are quiet on the car ride home. The road turns sharply five or six times before we see the lights of town. The clouds have lifted some and the sky is almost clear, but not quite. There are no stars. From here, Meadville looks quaint, almost inviting.

“Did he just get bored?” I ask without mentioning Evan by name. “Is that what you think happened? Did he just get bored with me?”

“Maybe,” Pete says. “That kind of thing happens.” Then he speaks with the wisdom of someone who has lived three years in northwestern Pennsylvania. “That kind of thing happens all the time around here.”

We coast down the hill into town and Pete asks me if I’m hungry.

“Not really,” I say. I am upset, but I can’t quite figure out what it is that bothers me. I don’t think it’s Evan specifically. I will miss him, but Claire’s right. We were never that good a match. I’m mad about the way he’s handled the whole thing and wonder if I’ll ever mention it to him or if I’ll just let things go their own way.

“It’s not that late,” Pete tells me and I agree. Neither one of us teaches on Mondays, but we usually go into school to grade papers, to check our mail, to be around people.

“We could watch TV at my house,” Pete says. “There might be a movie.”

“That sounds good,” I say, because it does. I would like to avoid my apartment, avoid being alone as long as possible. And just as if he has the same idea, Pete passes his house and we drive downtown. The streets are heavy with traffic. It’s the high school kids cruising around the diamond, the park in the center of downtown. They circle the diamond every night in their parents’ cars and trucks. If it’s a nice night like it is right now, the kids from the farming community drive in and join the townies. We drive around and around the diamond honking at one another, drinking beer, and calling out to one another. They always drive in the same direction, clockwise, as if following some predetermined pattern. Like all rituals, the customs are complicated, some not even apparent.

Pete cuts over on North Street and we get into the cruising line and follow the traffic around the gazebo, past the bronze statue of Crawford, the man who founded the county and who some say was eaten by Indians. Others insist that no one ever found his body and have no concrete proof that the Indians even touched him. We circle past the Meadville Public Library and the fifteen-foot American flag dedicated to the town by the Daughters of the American Revolution, even though there is no chapter in Meadville. We pass the funeral home where the clay point setter stands by the front door. The dog is frozen in motion. His ears stick straight up, his right paw is bent as if wounded. His face is illuminated by the small yellow spotlight.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.