A Big Storm Knocked It Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

Parker!” He said this with genuine delight, and when he got near he took Jane Louise’s hand in his.
    â€œHow very nice!” he said. “Eleanor told us all about your lovely wedding. Mrs. Harting sent me down to you with this.” He held out a jar with a gingham-wrapped top. “It’s her own special paradise jelly,” he said. “Apple, quince, and cranberry. You can have it on your toast for breakfast.” He coughed slightly as if the idea of Teddy and Jane Louise waking up together and having breakfast embarrassed him.
    â€œHow is your arthritis?” asked Teddy.
    â€œOh, it hobbles me,” Dr. Harting said. “There’s some young doctor up in Threadford who uses bee stings and says it works, and some other fellow over at that Vision of the Immortal—what’s the name of that place over in Bryanston, Teddy?”
    â€œI never get it right,” Teddy said. “Do you remember, Janey? We passed it last summer.”
    â€œFellowship of Possibility,” said Jane Louise.
    â€œShe’s my memory,” said Teddy fondly.
    â€œWell, there’s a fellow there who cures it with acupuncture, and I’m going to give it a try. Mrs. Harting and I were in China three years ago and were very impressed by the acupuncture clinic. Well, I’m off. Got to do my two-mile constitutional.”
    â€œPlease thank Mrs. Harting for the jelly,” said Jane Louise.How like a foreign language these conversations were, she thought. Proper and formal, and all sentences well constructed and in the right place. In thirty years would Teddy refer to her as “Mrs. Parker” instead of “my wife”?
    They walked home in the dark. The air was cold enough to cut through Jane Louise’s sweater. The lights from the house looked warm and yellow, a beacon for a lonely traveler. She clung to Teddy under an old maple tree that year after year was deformed by lightning strikes but year after year put out leaves. These leaves drifted down now, grazing their heads. She wanted everything to be all right, to make everything all right, to be Teddy’s happy memory.
    He was her husband now, for better and worse. Better was his level, lighthearted side—Teddy was a fixer. He could fix the jammed lock on your hall door, or a sticking window. He could get underneath your car and do minor repairs. He could put together a greenhouse from a kit and help if you could not follow the directions that came with the answering machine. He could read the stars in the sky or tell you what bird you were hearing. As a boy he could have walked out into the woods and then told you what the weather would be for the next three days.
    He knew how to camp out, to travel with a knapsack, to talk to foreigners who needed help in a city. If you took his hand you felt secure in a forest or a bad neighborhood. He did not really want to know, but because he had been in a war he knew about weapons. In Vietnam he had had a civet cat for a pet before his Montagnard guides had eaten it. He could take wonderful photographs. Beth Peering often said that if it were not for Teddy, she would have no decent photos of her girls. One of Jane Louise’s treasured possessions was a picture he had taken of herself and Birdie at the lake, both wearing hats and black T-shirts,looking up from their sketchbooks and smiling. It was that photo that made Jane Louise know how much Teddy loved her and how deep into his life she had gotten.
    For, despite his equitable spirits, his belief that things in the world could be fixed, his ability to deal with life as if life were some sort of trainable dog, there was a seam of despair in him that was thin but deep. Jane Louise abided with this, and when he fell into its crack, he was remote as stone, friendly but distant. He even turned his public face to her, which broke her heart when it happened. It had taken her months to realize that he was not approachable in this