Save Me the Waltz: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

of one emotional experience as preparation to another.
    When Joey said “Yes” Alabama felt cheated out of a drama to which she had bought her ticket with her interest. “No show today; the leading lady has cold feet,” she thought.
    She couldn’t tell whether Joan was crying or not. Alabama sat polishing white slippers in the upstairs hall. She could see her sister lying on the bed, as if she had laid herself down there and gone off and forgotten to come back, but she didn’t seem to be making a noise.
    “Why don’t you want to marry Acton?” she heard the Judge say kindly.
    “Oh—I haven’t got any trunk, and it means leaving home, and my clothes are all worn out,” answered Joan evasively.
    “I’ll get you a trunk, Joey, and he is well able to give you clothes and a good home and all you will be needing in life.”
    The Judge was gentle with Joan. She was less like him than the others; her shyness had made her appear more composed, more disposed to bear with her lot than Alabama or Dixie.
    The heat pressed down about the earth inflating the shadows, expanding the door and window ledges till the summer split in a terrific clap of thunder. You could see the trees by the lightning flashes gyrating maniacally and waving their arms about like furies. Alabama knew Joan was afraid of a storm. She crept into her sister’s bed and slipped her brown arm over Joan like a strong bolt over a sagging door. Alabama supposed that Joan had to do the right thing and have the right things; she could see how that might be necessary if a person was like Joan. Everything about Joan had a definite order. Alabama was like that herself sometimes on a Sunday afternoon when there was nobody in the house besides herself and the classic stillness.
    She wanted to reassure her sister. She wanted to say, “And, Joey, if you ever want to know about the japonicas and the daisy fields it will be all right that you have forgotten because I will be able to tell you about how it felt to be feeling that way that you cannot quiteremember—that will be for the time when something happens years from now that reminds you of now.”
    “Get out of my bed,” said Joan abruptly.
    Alabama wandered sadly about, in and out through the pale acetylene flashes.
    “Mamma, Joey’s scared.”
    “Well, do you want to lie here by me, dear?”
    “I’m not scared; I just can’t sleep. But I’ll lie there, please, if I may.”
    The Judge often sat reading Fielding. He closed his book over his thumb to mark the end of the evening.
    “What are they doing at the Catholic Church?” the Judge said. “Is Harlan a Catholic?”
    “No, I believe not.”
    “I’m glad she’s going to marry Acton,” he said inscrutably.
    Alabama’s father was a wise man. Alone his preference in women had created Millie and the girls. He knew everything, she said to herself. Well, maybe he did—if knowing is paring your perceptions to fit into the visible portion of life’s mosaic, he did. If knowledge is having an attitude toward the things we have never experienced and preserving an agnosticism toward those we have, he did.
    “I’m not glad,” Alabama said decisively. “Harlan’s hair goes up like a Spanish king. I’d rather Joey married him.”
    “People can’t live off the hair of Spanish kings,” her father answered.
    Acton telegraphed that he would arrive at the end of the week and how happy he was.
    Harlan and Joan rocked in the swing, jerking and creaking the chain and scraping their feet over the worn gray paint and snipping the trailers off the morning glories.
    “This porch is always the coolest, sweetest place,” said Harlan.
    “That’s the honeysuckle and star jasmine you smell,” said Joan.
    “No,” said Millie, “it’s the cut hay across the way, and my aromatic geraniums.”
    “Oh, Miss Millie, I hate to leave.”
    “You’ll be back.”
    “No, not any more.”
    “I’m very sorry, Harlan——” Millie kissed him on the cheek.