Edith’s Diary Read Online Free PDF Page A

Awaiting B.’s return from NY with Uncle George. He is coming to stay with us, for a while anyway. I wonder what I’ll be writing a year from now about him? Because I don’t see any end to it, and don’t think G. is anywhere near dying. He’s 73 or 74 and the family lives a long time. I’m quite sure he’s going to need some waiting on. C. already grimly resentful (no milk of human kindness in him!) saying, ‘Does he think we’re an old folks’ home or something?’ If G. does turn out to be insufferable, surely I’ve got the right to say so to B. G. has plenty of money to live in a proper nursing home somewhere. He wants to pay us something, B. says, exactly what I don’t know. When I
    She stopped. Through the gentle hum of a car passing on the street, the distant shout of a child, she had heard the closer, more meaningful crackle of the Chrysler climbing the graveled driveway. She made sure the ink was dry on what she’d just written, closed her pen, closed her diary, and pushed it toward a corner of her worktable. She checked her appearance in a mirror on the wall. Hardly any lipstick, but it didn’t matter. Her hair would do, and she ran her fingers upward through the loose, reddish brown curls.
    At thirty-six, Edith was trim and athletic, in the sense that her shoulders were strong, her waist rather flat. Once in a while she thought she had put on too much weight, but she could take it off in days with a minimum of effort. She had light brown eyes, much the color of her hair, and eyelashes that seemed to be pointed artificially, which gave her a bright, alert look, she thought, a fact she was grateful for, because she did not always feel bright and alert, and it was nice to think she looked it. Her face was rather square, unlike her mother’s or father’s, and was perhaps a throwback to her Irish great-grandmother whose daguerreotype Edith possessed. Brett had once said she looked like a girl one could come up to and talk to, and Edith remembered he had said this in regard to the first time they met, Brett among a contingent of left-wingers from Columbia visiting Bryn Mawr in the spring of 1942. Brett had been then a post-graduate student at the School of Journalism. How full of energy and enthusiasm he had been then! Why should she think of all that – now? Edith gave her hair a final touch, and turned from the mirror.
    A cheerful welcome was what counted now, and Edith intended to give George that. Plus tea or a drink of whatever he wanted. She had seen the old boy three or four times, she remembered, a couple of times in his New York apartment, then once in the nursing home more than a year ago. It was not quite 5 p.m.
    Edith went out on the front porch, which had side steps onto the driveway as well as front steps. George, in the front seat beside Brett, seemed to be wearing a plaid bathrobe, and Edith felt a twinge of pity which was at once counteracted by the thought that he might be putting on an act. ‘Hello, George!’ she called as Brett opened the passenger door for him. ‘Welcome!’
    ‘Hi, honey,’ Brett said. ‘Give me a hand with a couple of these things? Is Cliff around?’
    ‘He went for a walk with some boys – or to get a soda, I don’t know. – How’re you, George?’ There were two or three carry-alls besides a big suitcase on the back seat.
    ‘Not too bad, thank you, Edith. And it’s kind of you to have me – indeed.’ He coughed, and had barely squeezed out the last words. His face was pale and flat, his head bald with a fringe of gray. He was a tallish man, and by no means slender but rather solid.
    Brett assisted George in getting out of the car and walking up the steps. George stooped, as if he hurt. Edith hovered, ready to take an elbow, but Brett seemed to be doing all right. George wore black shoes with no socks, and had pajamas on under his robe. There was something indecent-looking to Edith about his bare, blue-veined ankles.
    ‘That’s it. Thank you, Brett,