A Big Storm Knocked It Over Read Online Free PDF

other hand, she loved Eleanor’s house, every single board of it.
    It was a white clapboard house set by John Crampton’s apple orchard. It had a large, sunny kitchen with a big harvest table and a wood stove that was used only when Teddy and Jane Louise visited. Eleanor was as indifferent to food as she was to the cold, and in her pantry were dozens of dusty, unidentifiable jars of this or that, the castoffs of her occasional attempts to produce something interesting for a dinner party. At Eleanor’s table Jane Louise had encountered a kind of food she had never seen in her life. Lilly, her own mother, was lavish. Even when money was tight and the car was barely functioning, she produced standing ribs, smoked salmon, and filet mignon. Eleanor offered starker fare: roasts of a kind Jane Louise was unfamiliar with, which were tough and required intensive chewing. Frozen vegetables, watery potatoes.
    Her living room was plain and comfortable. The tapestry on the wing chair was frayed, and the old Persian rugs were worn. The mullioned windows looked down a grassy slope to a stone wall. On the other side were the apple trees. If you woke up early enough in the morning, you might see deer grazing on the windfalls.
    Teddy and Jane Louise slept in the ornamental bed in the guest room. His boyhood room had been turned into Eleanor’s study. On a shelf above her desk she kept the things he had brought home to her from Vietnam—he had been drafted and served for eighteen months—a little bamboo cricket cage, a brass Montag-nard bracelet, a bolt of woven fabric, a basket. Her own bedroom had nothing in it of a personal nature except for garden catalogs, but the bedroom window overlooked her one great extravagance:a greenhouse, which she called a glasshouse. It had been put together by Teddy, Eleanor, and Peter Peering from a kit. On Sunday mornings Eleanor liked to read her newspaper and listen to music in it. On the coldest day, it was warm. In this space she set her cold frames, her orchids, her miniature roses.
    When Jane Louise went upstairs she saw that Teddy had brought up the bags and also that he had turned down the bedcovers. Teddy was not generally expressive, and when he was, Jane Louise felt like a person in a fairy tale whose heart had been pierced by a rose thorn.
    In this house her husband assumed a posture she did not normally see. This was his house, his history. The intimacy of the occasion struck Jane Louise. She did not know this house, did not know where to find the extra string or the clothesline. It was not second nature to her. Teddy was the rightful inhabitant: She was still the guest, no matter how many wonderful meals she had prepared in its kitchen.
    Downstairs Teddy was putting things to rights. He had turned up the thermostat to heat the living room and had lit a fire in the wood stove. When she got to the kitchen, he was filling the kettle.
    â€œLet’s go for a walk,” Teddy said. “Then we can come back and have tea.” This was also his custom. He liked to get out into the air and take possession of the landscape. Jane Louise also believed that in some way he needed distance from the house in order to get back to it.
    They pulled on their sweaters and walked out.
    The sun was just going down, and the light was beginning to turn a faint lavender. Small yellow leaves blew off the trees and scattered at their feet. Brilliant red maple leaves as large as demitassesaucers floated down onto the road. It was suddenly cold: You could see your breath. Jane Louise huddled next to Teddy. They walked arm in arm, and their long strides matched.
    By the time they had walked halfway down the road, it was almost dark. They could hear the purring of screech owls, who let you get very near and then vanished.
    Coming toward them they could see Eleanor’s neighbor, Dr. Harting, who was elderly and walked with a stick.
    â€œHello!” he called out. “Mr. and Mrs.