Dear Doctor Lily Read Online Free PDF

done everything she could to rescue “Ida from possible disaster, willing or not. ‘Marriage is the rest of your life
(I’d never do anything to hurt Barbara).
You haven’t got to go through with it, if you –’
    â€˜Leave me alone.’ Ida set her pink mouth in a sucked-in grimace that looked as if she had no teeth. ‘I didn’t tell you not to make a sketch of yourself with that fellow all over the Air Force building.’
    â€˜I didn’t.’ Having started this wretched conversation feeling like Ida’s grandmother, Lily felt absurdly young again. ‘I’m sorry, Eye, I was only trying to help.’
    â€˜I know.’ Ida turned and gave Lily her crooked smile. ‘But you got to learn to leave people alone.’
    â€˜That won’t get me far as a social worker.’
    They both laughed, and Paul looked across at them, and then away.
    â€˜Good thing too,’ Ida said.
    The plane roared to a crescendo. The broken cliffs approached, slid by, sped past, the black buff ahead menaced them and then gave up and dropped out of sight as they soared.
    Paul got off the plane ahead of Lily, who could not get up until Ida finally managed to squash her feet into the new shoes. She saw him in the baggage hall, going through customs, andfollowed him through the narrow exit where the crowd waited, forcing herself to look for his wife. Barbara would be small and chic, with tiny feet and hands and short crisp hair in overlapping leaves. The child would toddle forwards, and his father would put down his bag and briefcase and bend to pick him up.
    Paul walked out through the glass outer door alone, and disappeared among the crowd of taxis and cars. He had not looked behind him.
    â€˜Lily!’ It was Pam’s brother, looking different in America, wearing a loose old jersey and torn grey tennis shoes. ‘Where the hell have you been? Don’t bother to tell me. We kept calling the airline and telling them for God’s sake, you’d got to be here for the great day tomorrow. C’mon.’ He took Lily’s suitcase. ‘We’ll just make it to Pam’s last supper if we drive fast.’

Two
    By the time Ida had got through customs with her two suitcases, she had lost Lily and was on her own in the crowd of passengers and greeters. She had to have a porter, but she had no money to pay him until she found Buddy. Suppose he wasn’t here? Suppose he had given her up and gone back to Watkins A.F. Base, Mass?
    â€˜See your party, miss?’ The friendly black porter stopped his trolley.
    Ida looked everywhere, moving this way and that to see past groups of people gathered round passengers, talking noisily, small children clamouring at ground level. No Buddy. No patch of grey-blue, moving rather stiffly, as he did when he was in uniform.
    â€˜He’ll be here, I know he will.’ Did the porter think she had been ditched?
    â€˜Sure he will.’ The porter took her bags off the trolley. ‘I have to go help another party.’
    â€˜But I can’t pay you till I –’
    â€˜Don’t worry about it. I’ll be back. Just look for me on your way out. You’ll be okay.’
    He was huge and kind and dignified and safe, like Jarvis Murray at the bottom of Staple Street, whose daughter had taught Ida to jive. When he had gone, Ida stood by her luggage as if she were on a tiny desert island, and wondered if she would recognize Buddy, even if he were here. They hadn’t seen each other all that many times, and people didn’t look the same over here anyway. Mrs Bison had put on dark glasses and crimson lipstick. Wally, talking to a man in a black suit by the phones, didn’t look so jovial.
    Where was Lily? She had wanted to meet Buddy. Why hadn’t she waited? Ida’s feet were in agony. She kicked off her shoes and stood with them in her hand, searching, waiting, notknowing where to go if she moved from this