Flesh of My Flesh: Short Story Read Online Free PDF

days.”
    It turned out he’d been writing to her for five months. He had an accordion file of her letters, all of which were written inmauve ink on pale yellow writing paper. “You’ll get a kick out of the letterhead,” he said, showing her the drawing of an inkwell and quill pen and, underneath, a Michigan address. “Howdy Bill!” Marion read before he turned the letter over and let her read the newspaper ad, which he had cut out and taped to the back. “Queen-sized, happy-go-lucky widow,” it said. “Country gal at heart, 54, seeks marriage-minded gentleman. Age, looks, unimportant, although teddy-bear type a plus. Will relocate. No games!”
    “Of course, I’ll always love your mother,” her father said.
    Marion looked again at the photograph. Glasses, fuzzy blond hair. Yellow Bermuda shorts oozing chubby knees. So different from her trim little mother that she said, trying to get it straight, “But you’re not going to marry her.”
    Her father stacked the letters and tapped the sides and ends to line up the edges. “That’s what she’s flying up here to see about,” he said, but he looked desperate, as though the whole thing had gotten completely out of hand, and Marion let out a laugh, then closed her eyes, overcome by a sense of the pure loneliness that must have driven him to this.
    “Hey, listen,” he said. “This is your home. If you don’t take to her—”
    “No, it’s okay, Dad,” she said. And it was only to reassure him that she added, “Because I think I’m going to be getting married, too.”
    So John Bucci came for supper the next night, bringing two bottles of red wine, a case of brown shoe polish and a stack of gas coupons. He wore his sharkskin suit. He offered to have his gravel company grade their driveway, and her father took him up on it. After he had gone, her father said, “His heart’s in the right place,” meaning he was prepared to see past the suit and big talk. Then, after a minute, he said, “That’s what counts,” and Marion got the feeling he wasn’t thinking about John now, he was thinking about—he was selling himself on—Grace Inkpen.
    He drove into the city to pick her up from the airport. He wore the charcoal suit he bought off the rack for the funeral. While he was gone Marion changed the sheets on the little trundle bed in her brother’s old room. Last night she had offered to let Grace sleep in her room, which had a double bed, but her father had said, slightly alarmed, “She’s not
that
big.”
    Well, she was. As soon as Marion saw her getting out of the car, she raced upstairs and gathered her brush and comb, her nightgown, slippers, pillow and the photo of her mother that she kept on her bedside table, and she threw them on the chair in her brother’s room. Then she grabbed the pillow from the trundle bed and the vase of lilacs from the dresser and put them in her room.
    When she got back downstairs, her father and Grace were still coming up the walk, Grace stopping every two steps to gaze around and exclaim. She had on a billowing pink coat and was holding a little artificial Christmas tree in each hand. “Bad boy!” she cried, laughing, when Sophie, their pregnant collie, leapt at an electrical wire dangling from one of the Christmas trees. Her father, who was carrying the suitcases, tried to kick Sophie in the rump but he missed. An unlit cigarette hung between his lips, and his head was shaking badly. Marion opened the door, and Grace, looking overwhelmed with joy, came straight for her. “Well, well, well,” Grace said, rushing and panting up the steps. Marion backed up a bit. “You okay with those cases, Bill?” Grace cried, but her ecstatic eyes stayed skewered to Marion.
    She gave Marion a hug. She was still holding the Christmas trees. “I know who
you
are,” she said. She let go of her and shouted over her shoulder, “Why didn’t you say you had a pinup girl in the house, Bill?” Then, “You can light that now!” She