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Spin the Cat – he and a bunch of older boys, high-school dropouts mostly. And in the spring it emerged that he hadn’t attended school in some time and would not be promoted from junior year to senior.
C. He found a job in an envelope factory, finally, something to do with shipping, and started looking for an apartment. The only trouble was, the rents were so high and his paycheck so puny. Good, Ira said. Now may be he would have to face a few hard facts. Maggie wished Ira would just shut up. “Don’t worry,” she told Jesse. “Something will come along.”
12. Translate into Russian (in writing):
A. For the next few days Maggie felt troubled, indecisive. Examples came to mind of Jesse’s fickleness – how he kept moving on to new stages and new enthusiasms, leaving the old ones behind. You couldn’t leave a wife and baby behind!
Ira was in a good mood those days, because he’d heard about the computer job. “This is more like it,” Ira told Maggie. “This is something with a future. And who knows? Maybe after a bit he’ll decide to go back to school. I’m sure they’ll want him to finish school before they promote him.”
She and Ira tried to keep their storms private, but no doubt Jesse overheard at least a little. Or maybe he just sensed how they felt; for more and more, as he entered his teens, it was to Maggie that he offered his few crumbs of conversation, while he grew steadily more distant from Ira. By the time he told her about the baby, Maggie felt fairly distant from Ira herself. They’d been through too many arguments, rehashed the subject of Jesse too many thousand times. It wasn’t merely her promise that kept Maggie from telling Ira about the baby; it was battle fatigue. Ira would hit the roof! And rightly so, of course.
(from Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler)
B. At least Jack was no longer saying he loved her. They were terse and polite when obliged to confer on household matters, avoided meals together, worked in separate rooms. When one of her nieces dropped off her children for the weekend, identical twin girls aged eight, matters became easier, the apartment grew larger as attention turned outwards. For two nights Jack slept on the sofa in the sitting room, which the children never questioned. One or the other would seek Fiona out where she was reading, and stand before her, resting a confiding hand on her knee, and release a silvery stream of anecdote, reflection, fantasy. Fiona would join with the stories of her own. Twice on this visit it happened that while she was speaking, a wave of love for the child constricted her throat and pricked her eyes. She was feeling old and foolish. It bothered her to be reminded how good Jack was with children. At the risk of putting his back out, he indulged some wild horseplay, which the girls took to with fits of inhuman shrieking. He took them into the gardens to teach them an eccentric version of cricket he’d devised, and he read a long bedtime tale with booming comic energy and a talent for the voices. But on Sunday evening after the twins had been picked up, the rooms shrank back, the air was stale.
(from The Children Act by Ian McEwan)
13. Translate into English using the vocabulary of the lesson:
Мэгги не могла понять, почему Айра так отрицательно относится к их сыну, ведь Джес был таким симпатичным парнем. Он, правда, легко срывался, но никогда не помнил зла. Правда и то, что мальчиком он не приходил вечером домой вовремя, не делал уроков, предпочитая всему баскетбол.
Но почему она, мать, помнила его смех, а отец – только вспышки раздражения? В семье, где родители жили очень замкнуто, у Джеса было море друзей, а потом появились девушки, которые просто с ума сходили от его нахальства, но Мэгги знала, что им ничего не светит.
И тут началась музыка. Джес начал писать песни
, и матери они очень нравились. Нравились они и его друзьям; Дон Бэрнем посоветовал ему создать поп-группу, что Джес и сделал, а весной выяснилось, что его не переведут в следующий класс из-за неуспеваемости.
Отец велел ему либо заниматься летом, либо идти работать, и Джес сказал, что будет счастлив найти работу и уйти из дома, лишь бы ему не дышали в затылок.
Джес рыскал по городу в поисках работы, но каждый вечер возвращался домой мрачнее тучи. По мнению отца всему виной была его одежда. Пора взглянуть правде в лицо – он не получит работу, если не будет одеваться нормально. И Джес в ярости убегал из дома, крича, что ему не нужна работа на фирме, где столько внимания уделяется внешности, а родители винили друг друга: отец за то, что мать была такой мягкой, а мать – за то, что отец был излишне суров.
Джес с рождения был причиной их разногласий; отец обвинял его во всех смертных грехах, а мать считала, что нужно набраться терпения.
Вскоре Мэгги заметила, что ее сын очень долго говорит по телефону, а когда она случайно поднимала трубку, там слышался один и тот же девичий голос. Джес, наконец, нашел работу, но его заработка не хватало, чтобы снять квартиру и жить отдельно.
В июле Джес сказал матери, что у его девушки проблемы, она беременна от него, и попросил мать поговорить с ней. После некоторых колебаний Мэгги согласилась. Мэгги знала, что Джес и Фиона любят друг друга, но Фиона не была уверена, захочет ли Джес жениться на ней, так как это может повредить его карьере. Она боялась, что он когда-нибудь ей это припомнит. Мэгги сказали, что они помогут на первых порах. Когда Джес вышел из ванной, Фиона сказала ему, что не возражает против того, чтобы выйти за него замуж.
Discussion
11 Define the message of the text. Find passages in the text to support your statement.
12. Identify significant ideas from the text. Back them up with a quote.
13. Discuss what struck you most in the text.
14. Mark places you especially like and explain why.
15. Say if there are passages that seem wrong to you.
16. In what way would you speak your mind as regards the situation Jesse found himself in?
17. What question is the text asking you?
18. How does this text work on you as a reader?
19. Pick out words and phrases from the text denoting emotional state.
20. Describe Jesse’s emotions while he was looking for a job.
21. Retell the text in detail.
22. Retell the text in the person of Ira, Maggie, Jesse.
23. Give a character sketch of Jesse, Ira, Maggie. Speak about the relationship between Ira and Maggie, Jessie and his parents.
24. Act out a conversation between Ira and Jesse.
25. Imagine you are talking to Fiona. What would you say to her?
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Whitney Otto
From “How to make an American quilt”
Around the time of Edie’s sixteenth birthday, Sophia takes a long look at her as her daughter leans on the open refrigerator door, orange-juice bottle tilted to her lips, head thrown back. Sophia can see Edie’s throat muscles working, taking the liquid, and she is about to say, Honey, why must you always wear that awful windbreaker, when something else catches her eye. Edie’s slender frame has gone broad around the middle, down a little low, the curve of the belly unmistakable. “Oh!” exclaims Sophia, which causes Edie to turn toward her, red-faced, clumsily shoving the bottle back into the fridge, adjusting her windbreaker. Hastening her retreat.
“Look, Mom,” she begins, “I didn’t mean to drink from the bottle,” while Sophia can barely speak. How is Edie these days?
She is trembling. Sophia says, “Edie,” and cannot finish her sentence, to which her daughter screams, I said I was sorry, and rushes from the room.
Sophia slowly rises from the table, smooths back her hair with both hands, her hair that was once dark and shining but is now shot with coarse gray. She tugs at her dress and clips the tip of her nose. She ascends the stairs.
As Sophia looks in on Edie, who sits on her bed, she says, “How could you let this happen?” She does not say, Why didn’t you tell me sooner?
“It wasn’t only me,” says Edie.
Sophia sighs, edges toward her youngest child, her slim figure so like Sophia’s at that age. “Let me break it to your father, in my own way. I guess the boy will have to marry you.”
Edie, sad-eyed, looks away. “I don’t know about that.”
“Of course he’ll marry you, honey,” she says quietly, comfortingly. “It’s not so bad. You’ll see.” She cannot be truly happy about this turn of events, yet she can find a way to accept them as inevitable. Her daughter will get married sooner or later and, after all, Sophia was only seventeen when she met Preston. Sophia runs her finger along the bedspread, sketching out the design for the beautiful crib quilt she will put together with the other quilters. Something with lambs and bunnies.
“That is not what I meant,” says the girl. “I mean, I don’t think I want him for a husband.”
She cannot answer. She cannot make a crib quilt for a child without a proper name.
* * *
When Em whispers to Sophia one night at the quilting circle, “Surely you could reconsider the adoption,” Sophia responds loudly by saying, “This is not your business, Em.”
Then looks across the unfinished quilt they are working on to see Anna Neale coldly watching her.
Preston sits with Sophia out by the little pond that she never uses. She is saying that they should send Edie to a home in Colorado to have her baby, then bring her back to finish school.
But Preston only says, “How could you give away a child of ours?”
“Pres, it’s not our child. It is Edie’s child.”
“But Edie’s our child,” he insists.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand you, Sophia.”
“What don’t you understand? I’ll tell you what: If she would marry the boy, I would feel differently, but she refuses. I won’t have a child in my house raising her child without the sanctity of marriage. Yes, marriage. Grown-up responsibilities. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just follow our heart’s desires?”
Preston has remained silent. “She’s our daughter. I will miss her.”
“And I won’t?” Sophia splashes her hand roughly in the pond’s dark water. “Why is it always that everyone else is supposed to get what they want?” It almost shocks her, this mother’s role, her mother’s voice emerging from her mouth with such conviction. This role she essentially mistrusts; the role she cannot quite abandon.
“Why don’t you ever use this pool?” asks Preston.
“I’m busy. You know that.”
He nods his head. “Remember when you took me to the quarry? I’ve never known why we stopped. Why you stopped.”
Sophia shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. When I became a wife and mother, I guess.”
The picture of Sophia leaping from the quarry rocks slices through his memory, and he wants to cry out, to tell her he loves her and has missed that about her. Instead he agrees to investigate sending Edie to Colorado for the duration of her pregnancy. He rises. He passes his wife without touching her and goes to find Edie.
It is almost impossible for a mother to separate the reality of her child from the abstract idea of her child, and some women never do this at all. When Duff was an abstract idea, Sophia’s first thought was that she wished her gone; her impulse was to erase the pregnancy. It was not a matter of wanting to “get rid” of it as much as wanting it to have never happened.
Then there was this child after nine long months and, suddenly, Duff was no longer an idea but a fact. There was no question of loving that girl. None at all. And, because of her circumstances prior to having her (that is, lusting after water and seeing in Preston someone who would take her to that water — or, less dreamily and more pragmatically, the fact of impending motherhood when she was unprepared for it), it was as if the pregnancy and the birth were truly two separate things that each had the power to open and close Sophia’s world.
And it seemed to Sophia that the woman who cannot happily greet her baby from the very moment she becomes aware of its existence is a woman who will live in secrecy, hoping that no one (least of all the child, least of all Duff) ever suspects that she once wished it gone.
The phone call from Colorado came early in the morning: that Edie had run away in her ninth, dangerous month. She went to town to pick up something and never returned. Could one or both of them come at once?
Preston said that he would go and, curiously, Sophia was not overly worried about her child’s escape; was she being ignorant or callous or trusting? Perhaps it was something she would have done herself. No, Sophia acknowledged, she was too much like her own mother to attempt such an action, but she knew she would have wanted to do it. Some things were so difficult to know, but she felt it possible that Edie would turn up at Duff’s.
Duff, who has long since moved to Chicago, a childless, unmarried (“Christ, I’ve become a modern statistic, Mom”) career woman. Sophia cannot help but imagine Duff in a smart suit, trading witticisms with William Powell or Cary Grant types; bright, feisty Duff. I never could have been a career woman, Sophia tells herself — I mean, swimming isn’t a career. Perhaps Duff will find the right fellow; Sophia hopes to god she does, because a manless life is a lonely one; Sophia feels it most acutely since Preston has gone to find Edie and still has not come home. He has not even been heard from. Sophia does not even know where he is.
She lives with Pres junior, who attends the local college, and every time he mentions leaving, Sophia blanches and is silent.
A Mismatched Marriage
From “The Amateur Marriage” by Anne Tyler
(abridged)
Pauline said, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a birthday.” Michael stopped pouring his cereal and looked across the table at her. “It was January fifth,” Pauline said. “The woman was twenty-three.”
“Why, that’s your birthday, too!” Michael’s mother told her. “That’s how old you turned, only yesterday!”
“And because this woman happened to be at a low point in her life,” Pauline went on, “she was feeling very sensitive about her age.”
Michael said cautiously, “ A low point in her life?”
“Yes, she wasn’t awfully attractive just then,” Pauline said. “She was two months pregnant and sick as a dog, and still hadn’t got her figure back from the last time she was pregnant. Also, her husband was a quarter-year younger than she was. For three months after every birthday, she was an Older Woman. Can you imagine how that felt? She was old and fat and ugly, and her bosom was starting to sag.”
Pauline herself was prettier than ever, in Michael’s opinion. This early in the morning, unrouged and unlipsticked, wearing a flowered chintz housecoat, she looked as fresh as a child.
“Luckily for this woman,” Pauline continued, “her husband was very understanding. He hated for her to feel bad! He decided he would devote himself to making her birthday present.”
Michael stirred uneasily. He had certainly not forgotten her birthday but neither could he say he had devoted himself to making it perfect. (It had fallen on a weekday this year. He did have a business to run.)
C. He found a job in an envelope factory, finally, something to do with shipping, and started looking for an apartment. The only trouble was, the rents were so high and his paycheck so puny. Good, Ira said. Now may be he would have to face a few hard facts. Maggie wished Ira would just shut up. “Don’t worry,” she told Jesse. “Something will come along.”
12. Translate into Russian (in writing):
A. For the next few days Maggie felt troubled, indecisive. Examples came to mind of Jesse’s fickleness – how he kept moving on to new stages and new enthusiasms, leaving the old ones behind. You couldn’t leave a wife and baby behind!
Ira was in a good mood those days, because he’d heard about the computer job. “This is more like it,” Ira told Maggie. “This is something with a future. And who knows? Maybe after a bit he’ll decide to go back to school. I’m sure they’ll want him to finish school before they promote him.”
She and Ira tried to keep their storms private, but no doubt Jesse overheard at least a little. Or maybe he just sensed how they felt; for more and more, as he entered his teens, it was to Maggie that he offered his few crumbs of conversation, while he grew steadily more distant from Ira. By the time he told her about the baby, Maggie felt fairly distant from Ira herself. They’d been through too many arguments, rehashed the subject of Jesse too many thousand times. It wasn’t merely her promise that kept Maggie from telling Ira about the baby; it was battle fatigue. Ira would hit the roof! And rightly so, of course.
(from Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler)
B. At least Jack was no longer saying he loved her. They were terse and polite when obliged to confer on household matters, avoided meals together, worked in separate rooms. When one of her nieces dropped off her children for the weekend, identical twin girls aged eight, matters became easier, the apartment grew larger as attention turned outwards. For two nights Jack slept on the sofa in the sitting room, which the children never questioned. One or the other would seek Fiona out where she was reading, and stand before her, resting a confiding hand on her knee, and release a silvery stream of anecdote, reflection, fantasy. Fiona would join with the stories of her own. Twice on this visit it happened that while she was speaking, a wave of love for the child constricted her throat and pricked her eyes. She was feeling old and foolish. It bothered her to be reminded how good Jack was with children. At the risk of putting his back out, he indulged some wild horseplay, which the girls took to with fits of inhuman shrieking. He took them into the gardens to teach them an eccentric version of cricket he’d devised, and he read a long bedtime tale with booming comic energy and a talent for the voices. But on Sunday evening after the twins had been picked up, the rooms shrank back, the air was stale.
(from The Children Act by Ian McEwan)
13. Translate into English using the vocabulary of the lesson:
Мэгги не могла понять, почему Айра так отрицательно относится к их сыну, ведь Джес был таким симпатичным парнем. Он, правда, легко срывался, но никогда не помнил зла. Правда и то, что мальчиком он не приходил вечером домой вовремя, не делал уроков, предпочитая всему баскетбол.
Но почему она, мать, помнила его смех, а отец – только вспышки раздражения? В семье, где родители жили очень замкнуто, у Джеса было море друзей, а потом появились девушки, которые просто с ума сходили от его нахальства, но Мэгги знала, что им ничего не светит.
И тут началась музыка. Джес начал писать песни
, и матери они очень нравились. Нравились они и его друзьям; Дон Бэрнем посоветовал ему создать поп-группу, что Джес и сделал, а весной выяснилось, что его не переведут в следующий класс из-за неуспеваемости.
Отец велел ему либо заниматься летом, либо идти работать, и Джес сказал, что будет счастлив найти работу и уйти из дома, лишь бы ему не дышали в затылок.
Джес рыскал по городу в поисках работы, но каждый вечер возвращался домой мрачнее тучи. По мнению отца всему виной была его одежда. Пора взглянуть правде в лицо – он не получит работу, если не будет одеваться нормально. И Джес в ярости убегал из дома, крича, что ему не нужна работа на фирме, где столько внимания уделяется внешности, а родители винили друг друга: отец за то, что мать была такой мягкой, а мать – за то, что отец был излишне суров.
Джес с рождения был причиной их разногласий; отец обвинял его во всех смертных грехах, а мать считала, что нужно набраться терпения.
Вскоре Мэгги заметила, что ее сын очень долго говорит по телефону, а когда она случайно поднимала трубку, там слышался один и тот же девичий голос. Джес, наконец, нашел работу, но его заработка не хватало, чтобы снять квартиру и жить отдельно.
В июле Джес сказал матери, что у его девушки проблемы, она беременна от него, и попросил мать поговорить с ней. После некоторых колебаний Мэгги согласилась. Мэгги знала, что Джес и Фиона любят друг друга, но Фиона не была уверена, захочет ли Джес жениться на ней, так как это может повредить его карьере. Она боялась, что он когда-нибудь ей это припомнит. Мэгги сказали, что они помогут на первых порах. Когда Джес вышел из ванной, Фиона сказала ему, что не возражает против того, чтобы выйти за него замуж.
Discussion
-
What made Jesse so popular among his peers? -
What were Jesse’s pluses and minuses in his parents’ opinion? -
Was Jesse’s fascination with music a passing fad or a way to express himself? -
What was the nature of the conflict between Ira and Jesse? -
What did they fight about? -
What kind of future did Jesse’s parents want for him? -
In what way did Jesse intend to realize himself? -
What was the atmosphere in their house like with Jesse present and Jesse away from home? -
In what way can the life of a school dropout be hard? -
Was Jesse a responsible young adult?
11 Define the message of the text. Find passages in the text to support your statement.
12. Identify significant ideas from the text. Back them up with a quote.
13. Discuss what struck you most in the text.
14. Mark places you especially like and explain why.
15. Say if there are passages that seem wrong to you.
16. In what way would you speak your mind as regards the situation Jesse found himself in?
17. What question is the text asking you?
18. How does this text work on you as a reader?
19. Pick out words and phrases from the text denoting emotional state.
20. Describe Jesse’s emotions while he was looking for a job.
21. Retell the text in detail.
22. Retell the text in the person of Ira, Maggie, Jesse.
23. Give a character sketch of Jesse, Ira, Maggie. Speak about the relationship between Ira and Maggie, Jessie and his parents.
24. Act out a conversation between Ira and Jesse.
25. Imagine you are talking to Fiona. What would you say to her?
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Whitney Otto
From “How to make an American quilt”
Around the time of Edie’s sixteenth birthday, Sophia takes a long look at her as her daughter leans on the open refrigerator door, orange-juice bottle tilted to her lips, head thrown back. Sophia can see Edie’s throat muscles working, taking the liquid, and she is about to say, Honey, why must you always wear that awful windbreaker, when something else catches her eye. Edie’s slender frame has gone broad around the middle, down a little low, the curve of the belly unmistakable. “Oh!” exclaims Sophia, which causes Edie to turn toward her, red-faced, clumsily shoving the bottle back into the fridge, adjusting her windbreaker. Hastening her retreat.
“Look, Mom,” she begins, “I didn’t mean to drink from the bottle,” while Sophia can barely speak. How is Edie these days?
She is trembling. Sophia says, “Edie,” and cannot finish her sentence, to which her daughter screams, I said I was sorry, and rushes from the room.
Sophia slowly rises from the table, smooths back her hair with both hands, her hair that was once dark and shining but is now shot with coarse gray. She tugs at her dress and clips the tip of her nose. She ascends the stairs.
As Sophia looks in on Edie, who sits on her bed, she says, “How could you let this happen?” She does not say, Why didn’t you tell me sooner?
“It wasn’t only me,” says Edie.
Sophia sighs, edges toward her youngest child, her slim figure so like Sophia’s at that age. “Let me break it to your father, in my own way. I guess the boy will have to marry you.”
Edie, sad-eyed, looks away. “I don’t know about that.”
“Of course he’ll marry you, honey,” she says quietly, comfortingly. “It’s not so bad. You’ll see.” She cannot be truly happy about this turn of events, yet she can find a way to accept them as inevitable. Her daughter will get married sooner or later and, after all, Sophia was only seventeen when she met Preston. Sophia runs her finger along the bedspread, sketching out the design for the beautiful crib quilt she will put together with the other quilters. Something with lambs and bunnies.
“That is not what I meant,” says the girl. “I mean, I don’t think I want him for a husband.”
She cannot answer. She cannot make a crib quilt for a child without a proper name.
* * *
When Em whispers to Sophia one night at the quilting circle, “Surely you could reconsider the adoption,” Sophia responds loudly by saying, “This is not your business, Em.”
Then looks across the unfinished quilt they are working on to see Anna Neale coldly watching her.
Preston sits with Sophia out by the little pond that she never uses. She is saying that they should send Edie to a home in Colorado to have her baby, then bring her back to finish school.
But Preston only says, “How could you give away a child of ours?”
“Pres, it’s not our child. It is Edie’s child.”
“But Edie’s our child,” he insists.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand you, Sophia.”
“What don’t you understand? I’ll tell you what: If she would marry the boy, I would feel differently, but she refuses. I won’t have a child in my house raising her child without the sanctity of marriage. Yes, marriage. Grown-up responsibilities. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just follow our heart’s desires?”
Preston has remained silent. “She’s our daughter. I will miss her.”
“And I won’t?” Sophia splashes her hand roughly in the pond’s dark water. “Why is it always that everyone else is supposed to get what they want?” It almost shocks her, this mother’s role, her mother’s voice emerging from her mouth with such conviction. This role she essentially mistrusts; the role she cannot quite abandon.
“Why don’t you ever use this pool?” asks Preston.
“I’m busy. You know that.”
He nods his head. “Remember when you took me to the quarry? I’ve never known why we stopped. Why you stopped.”
Sophia shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. When I became a wife and mother, I guess.”
The picture of Sophia leaping from the quarry rocks slices through his memory, and he wants to cry out, to tell her he loves her and has missed that about her. Instead he agrees to investigate sending Edie to Colorado for the duration of her pregnancy. He rises. He passes his wife without touching her and goes to find Edie.
It is almost impossible for a mother to separate the reality of her child from the abstract idea of her child, and some women never do this at all. When Duff was an abstract idea, Sophia’s first thought was that she wished her gone; her impulse was to erase the pregnancy. It was not a matter of wanting to “get rid” of it as much as wanting it to have never happened.
Then there was this child after nine long months and, suddenly, Duff was no longer an idea but a fact. There was no question of loving that girl. None at all. And, because of her circumstances prior to having her (that is, lusting after water and seeing in Preston someone who would take her to that water — or, less dreamily and more pragmatically, the fact of impending motherhood when she was unprepared for it), it was as if the pregnancy and the birth were truly two separate things that each had the power to open and close Sophia’s world.
And it seemed to Sophia that the woman who cannot happily greet her baby from the very moment she becomes aware of its existence is a woman who will live in secrecy, hoping that no one (least of all the child, least of all Duff) ever suspects that she once wished it gone.
The phone call from Colorado came early in the morning: that Edie had run away in her ninth, dangerous month. She went to town to pick up something and never returned. Could one or both of them come at once?
Preston said that he would go and, curiously, Sophia was not overly worried about her child’s escape; was she being ignorant or callous or trusting? Perhaps it was something she would have done herself. No, Sophia acknowledged, she was too much like her own mother to attempt such an action, but she knew she would have wanted to do it. Some things were so difficult to know, but she felt it possible that Edie would turn up at Duff’s.
Duff, who has long since moved to Chicago, a childless, unmarried (“Christ, I’ve become a modern statistic, Mom”) career woman. Sophia cannot help but imagine Duff in a smart suit, trading witticisms with William Powell or Cary Grant types; bright, feisty Duff. I never could have been a career woman, Sophia tells herself — I mean, swimming isn’t a career. Perhaps Duff will find the right fellow; Sophia hopes to god she does, because a manless life is a lonely one; Sophia feels it most acutely since Preston has gone to find Edie and still has not come home. He has not even been heard from. Sophia does not even know where he is.
She lives with Pres junior, who attends the local college, and every time he mentions leaving, Sophia blanches and is silent.
A Mismatched Marriage
From “The Amateur Marriage” by Anne Tyler
(abridged)
Pauline said, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a birthday.” Michael stopped pouring his cereal and looked across the table at her. “It was January fifth,” Pauline said. “The woman was twenty-three.”
“Why, that’s your birthday, too!” Michael’s mother told her. “That’s how old you turned, only yesterday!”
“And because this woman happened to be at a low point in her life,” Pauline went on, “she was feeling very sensitive about her age.”
Michael said cautiously, “ A low point in her life?”
“Yes, she wasn’t awfully attractive just then,” Pauline said. “She was two months pregnant and sick as a dog, and still hadn’t got her figure back from the last time she was pregnant. Also, her husband was a quarter-year younger than she was. For three months after every birthday, she was an Older Woman. Can you imagine how that felt? She was old and fat and ugly, and her bosom was starting to sag.”
Pauline herself was prettier than ever, in Michael’s opinion. This early in the morning, unrouged and unlipsticked, wearing a flowered chintz housecoat, she looked as fresh as a child.
“Luckily for this woman,” Pauline continued, “her husband was very understanding. He hated for her to feel bad! He decided he would devote himself to making her birthday present.”
Michael stirred uneasily. He had certainly not forgotten her birthday but neither could he say he had devoted himself to making it perfect. (It had fallen on a weekday this year. He did have a business to run.)