The River Swimmer by Jim Harrison

Author:Jim Harrison
Language: eng, fra
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2013-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Margaret arrived two days early because her traveling friend had had an illness in the family. She drove up from Grand Rapids with Sabrina, who had flown in from San Francisco the night before and had rented a ghastly-looking vehicle called a Hummer. When they came in the driveway before noon Clive was just emerging from the thicket where he had burned the remains of an old chicken coop on the west side and had vainly tried to make a series of sketches of the fire. Margaret joked that when Clive came out of the thicket she was frightened because he looked like Dad. In the next two days before Clive and Sabrina left for the north Margaret would let slip little phrases in Italian and French like people do who have just returned from Europe.

Sabrina startled Clive and he looked at her thinking she must be wearing high-heeled boots. She said she was six foot and when they embraced she was slender but athletic. Hadn’t he been paying attention or had the world grown smaller in the three years since he had seen her? Possibly.

There were two days of family nonsense with Mother insisting that they play card games, canasta and hearts, since there were four of them. Clive was pleased that he didn’t have to pack up all of his belongings because they were coming back to the farm. With this two-day interruption he was trying to keep art at a distance but was unsuccessful. Sabrina brought the past back freshly and he was slightly frightened at what had been happening to him in the few weeks on the farm. Was he ready to give up everything, but then it occurred to him he was giving up nothing that he cared about. He had called the rich woman in Atlanta. She was thrilled at the idea of subletting his apartment for half the year and the generous price she offered that took care of the whole year’s rent. He called the accountant in New York and it was determined his retirement would be forty-six thousand a year, not much but not bad. Associates in Portland, Oregon, and Athens, Ohio, had offered short but well-paid teaching stints, and there was a full-time offer at Stanford but he couldn’t bear to think of anything full-time. He would be a wandering painter half the year. In a college course on medieval Europe he had liked the idea of being a troubadour.

They played cards and drank wine late the last evening and he entertained them with comic stories of the lecture circuit and European travels. Once in a Paris hotel he had called the desk with his imperfect French and requested a foam pillow because feathered pillows made him sneeze. They brought him up an omelet. Once in St. Louis after giving his patented lecture on Art and Economics and during the Q & A, a persistent but well-dressed oaf who had his MBA written all over him tried to corner Clive into putting a price tag on the Mona Lisa.

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