Shirley Read Online Free PDF

my hair. “My Rosie. Nothing matters but you. Not before, not now, not ever. You are the reason I want to teach here. The reason for everything. To take care of you, to make a life with you, that’s all that matters.”
    What words could answer? I had, I think, tethered myself to the notion that someday a man would love me, and keep me safe, and I would become whole and able to greet the world without fear. I had married Fred believing that he was my chance for happiness. Now I was certain my luck had truly turned for the better. “Go on, then,” I told him. “Go see the campus. I’ll be fine.” Eyes still damp from weeping, I grinned and pushed him off the bed. “Get going. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll be fine here, Freddy. Go.”
    His relief was palpable.
    I waited in the room until I heard the front door slam behind the men, listened to the sounds of china and glassware clinking as breakfast dishes were cleared from the table. I let my heart quiet and my tears dry, and then I slipped down the hall to the bathroom, to get ready to spend my first full day with Shirley Jackson.
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    I WAS NERVOUS . The evening before, she had been hard work to keep up with. Half the time I didn’t even know who we were talking about: Howard’s name came up twenty times before I realized she meant the poet Howard Nemerov. Paul? That was the painter Paul Feeley. They were friends with Ralph Ellison; the up-and-coming writer Joyce Carol Oates had recently spent a weekend. They knew everybody at
The New
Yorker
; Stanley wrote for the magazine. At one point, Stanley said something offhand about Shirley’s story “The Lottery.” I’d read it, a long time before, about a ritual stoning in a New England village, and I opened my mouth, eager to contribute and delighted that I could, but before I could gather words together, Shirley made a joke about a professor of theirs from Syracuse, someone named Brown, and Fred seemed to know who he was and they were all laughing—even their oh-so-knowledgeable kids—and I was left behind again.
    So that morning, I admit I went down the stairs slowly, already worried I would be unable to entertain my formidable hostess.
    She was in the kitchen, leaning against the sink with the water running. Yesterday’s dress again. A cigarette trailing smoke. Her hair caught up in a limp ponytail. She was watching something outthe window, staring intently, and I didn’t want to startle her, so I cleared my throat before taking a step across the threshold.
    â€œGood morning,” she said, not turning. “There’s coffee on the stove.” Her voice was different from the night before, lower, the sound of countless cigarettes effable.
    â€œWhat a wonderful sleep I had,” I offered, knowing even as I spoke how dishonest the words sounded.
    â€œI have to sleep,” she said. “If I don’t, I can’t work.” She glanced over her shoulder, meeting my gaze frankly. Like me, she’d been crying. “And if I don’t work, it’s bad. We need the money. Four kids, this house, you can imagine.” She tightened both faucets, and took her apron off, leaving the dishes in the sink.
    We’d not talked about whether I would work, Fred and I. His mother never had; she was pretty and helpless and hardly knew how to open and shut the windows in their apartment. Her job at the store was little more than a social position, a way of visiting with her friends, keeping an eye on their children. Fred’s father—most of the fathers I knew, my own the sole exception—would have been embarrassed if his wife had to contribute to ongoing expenses. A wife could work for something specific; if she wanted to buy new furniture she could take a job in a department store and reap the discount, without shame. Though most of the women I knew had been forced to work on and off