Lapham Rising Read Online Free PDF Page A

panties and a bra as white as glaciers against her autobronzed skin, which is russet-colored, or the color of unpolished gold. With the ceremonial prance of a Lipizzaner, she walks to the bow. She walks to the stern. Then to the bow. Then to the stern. Onshore, hedges jostle. Car windows open. Rabbits stiffen. Back to the bow. Back to the stern.
    At last she is still again, and—as if lost in an ethereal reverie concerning plummeting interest rates or some newly minted millionaire just in from Rahway—she unhooks her bra and drops it at her side like a lace handkerchief. She looks out at the water. She looks at the shore. The shore’s mouth is dry and agape. Now she slips off her panties. One can almost hear a sighing of the clouds. But there are no clouds.
    “Why do you stare like that every morning?” asks Hector.
    “You wouldn’t understand.” I never mention his first medical procedure.
    She touches her forehead, then reaches up into her hair, a braid of browns and oranges that swings down to the middle of her back. She loosens the braid, and out spills plenty’s horn. She touches her ribs and rubs them as if attempting toinduce wings. She glows like a coal in ash. Though I would have no way of knowing this, I would put her normal body temperature at about 106. The water will hiss when she enters it. Though I would have no way of knowing this either, I imagine that she initiates lovemaking by leaping on a man from a great height, say a hayloft or a chandelier, and whispering “Surprise!” She touches her thighs and her knees as she steps to the side of the boat away from me and facing Lapham’s. Now she straightens her body. Now she perches. Now she dives. The water opens its grateful arms and waits.
    At this moment of her diving, as she is suspended in mid-jackknife, nothing happens on the East End of Long Island. Not a single nail is nailed. Not a single hedge is trimmed. Not a single bottle of Château Whatanamazingwine is sold. Not one compliment is paid to a tomato or an ear of corn or a peach. No one asks where the potato fields have gone. Likewise the duck farms. No Filipino housekeeper is yelled at for failing to position the fruit forks correctly. No year-round resident is pushed aside at a farmers’ market. No one asks anyone else to a small dinner just for close friends, or wishes there were more time to spend reading quietly on the beach away from all the big parties. No one gives kudos. Or draws raves. No one embarks on an exciting new phase of his life, or enters the third act of his life, or comments that life is a journey. No one plans a benefit dinner dance for a fatal disease. No one lowers his voice to say “Jew.”
    Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. The universe lies in respectful silence as sex and commerce find their apogee in Kathy Polite and her morning swim. For one brief moment in this day, for what certainly will be the only such moment, I am at peace—all bitterness relieved, all burdens lifted from me. The wind kicks up. I bless her unaware.

Four
    I t may surprise you to learn that I have considerable difficulty performing the ordinary transactions of daily living. Having my home on Noman allows me to avoid those transactions generally. But there are times when I am forced by circumstance to live as others do, and at such times, I am reminded that there exists a sort of natural selection process that applies to one’s chosen place on earth. I live on an island because I have trouble making connections. One reason I became a writer is that a writer’s connections with people are made at long distance. Now I’ve given up even that. I would seek therapy, but I do not want to connect with an analyst.
    So I have put off making my travel arrangements to Chautauqua until this, the very last minute, because I am bound to mess up those arrangements, to misunderstand what people have told me to do, or to leave home without my tickets or the papers required for my identification, or