My Dearest Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

house had taken care that a child not be able to fall from the high second floor. The bedrooms had wall-to-wall carpeting, as did the playroom; the living-room and kitchen floors were beautiful flagstones; and the entire house was full of light. There was even a fireplace built into the living-room wall, and Jack had been afraid that it would be a long time before he could buy a house with the luxury of a fireplace.
    Best of all, they could afford it. Barely. With Carey Ann’s father’s help. Jack agreed to borrow the down payment from his father-in-law; what else could he do? Andto give the old goat his due, Mr. Skrags went out of his way not to make Jack feel second-rate or obligated or indebted.
    So now here they were, in their beautiful house in the mountains. Jack had his job and Carey Ann had her baby, and she was down there crying and he was up here sitting on the toilet in his underwear. He rose, made a face at himself in the mirror, and went into the bedroom to put on his sweats. Then he took a deep breath and went downstairs.
    Carey Ann and Lexi were sitting on the floor with a wooden puzzle. Carey Ann rose and went up to Jack, nuzzling against him. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I mean about getting all maudlin about the party. I’m just having a real insecurity attack, I guess. I don’t know anyone here, and the faculty wives I met when you interviewed here … well, people are just so different. They’re so cool and boxed up. They make me feel like I’m funny-looking or something.”
    “You could never be anything but gorgeous,” Jack said, hugging her to him. (It flashed in his mind at just that moment, however, that he had noticed—and he wasn’t usually aware of women’s clothes—how different Carey Ann had looked next to the faculty wives when they were all out to dinner when he was being interviewed in the spring. All the other women wore little gold shells in their ears if they wore any jewelry at all, and there Carey Ann had been with her earrings swinging back and forth like pieces of a chandelier amid her shimmery hair. But he couldn’t tell her that, could he?) He tried to be helpful. “Listen, when I interviewed, we met only the old faculty. There are lots of young faculty wives around. I know you’ll make friends.”
    “I want to show you something!” Carey Ann said, pulling away from him, a smile on her face.
    Honestly, Jack thought, when his wife smiled she could light up the night. She led him to the little room under the stairs, which was to be Alexandra’s playroom.
    “Ta-
da
!” Carey Ann said, opening the door.
    The shelves along one wall, which had been meant to hold Lexi’s toys, were stacked now with Jack’s collection of books, mostly textbooks and novels. Their old card table was set up against the window looking out over the valley, and on top of that was his old faithful portable manual typewriter, and next to that an unopened box of bond paper. There was a coffee mug on the card table, holding pens, pencils, scissors, his letter opener. Behind the card table, within easy reach, were his dictionary and thesaurus.
    “I wanted to put your leather desk set out,” Carey Ann said shyly, “but there wasreally no place for it, since you don’t have a desk at home. Besides, I know you like to write on the typewriter instead of longhand.”
    “Come here,” Jack said, and hugged his wife against him, hard. He was overwhelmed with emotion.
    “It’s nice, isn’t it? Now you’ve got your own study. Now you can write your novel.”
    “I thought … Lexi’s playroom …”
    “Well, I could see I wasn’t going to have any luck getting Lexi to keep her toys in just one room. She likes to be wherever I am, so she’d always be dragging her stuff out into the kitchen to watch me cook, or to the living room. Besides, she’s got enough room in her bedroom for all her stuff. And she doesn’t like being stuck away from everyone. But you do. You need a room all