The Man Who Loved His Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

outrageously upon a boy in a parking lot.
    Once a week she had an afternoon to herself. Fletcher’s Thursday appointment with the barber and manicurist, sacred to a man who had nothing else on his calendar, took him into Los Angeles. He could easily have found a more convenient shop, but he had started with this barber and manicurist when he and Elaine had first come to the city and stayed at the AmbassadorHotel. He said the shop was the best in the city; his real reason was that they knew his disability and spared him the ordeal of speaking before strangers. He often lingered for a walk on streets where there were other pedestrians, tourists no doubt, whose presence gave the streets a slight sense of belonging to a city. Sometimes he drove down to the seedy center of the town to move with a crowd or listen to the street orators.
    On one of these Thursdays Elaine’s treasured loneliness was interrupted. Kneeling on the garden path, digging up and separating irises, she heard wheels on the driveway, thought that Fletcher had come home early. From the path came a voice, whole and masculine, “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I just want to look at your garden.”
    She turned with loam in her hands. From where she squatted, the man seemed very high, a long stretch of gabardine and tweed. “You haven’t changed much in the garden.”
    â€œYou know this garden?”
    â€œI grew up in this house.”
    â€œOh.” She stood up to see him better. A narrow-brimmed hat shaded a narrow face, bony and sparsely covered with transparent skin, freckle-spattered. His eyes were shielded by close-fitting dark glasses.
    â€œI haven’t been on the hill for a long time. But today . . . I had to see a patient on Geranium Drive so”—a long, freckled hand covered the grounds in a wide arc—“I came to see whether the new owners had ruined Aunt Cora’s garden.”
    â€œNew! We’ve been here more than a year, and why,” she challenged, “should we spoil your aunt’s garden?”
    â€œEveryone else does. How could I know you wouldn’t pull out all the plants and put in those bestial-looking plants set in white pebbles? All around here,” the long, freckled hand moved in an arc of eloquent contempt, “they hire landscape specialists ,” scorn underlined the word, “to make gardens ugly. I’m glad she isn’t here to see it.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œAunt Cora. My foster-mother. She planned and planted this garden.”
    â€œIt’s lovely.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t know the neighborhood. When I was a kid there was a grove of eucalyptus where that horror stands.” He jerked a nod toward a Greco-Roman contemporary with Regency urns on the roof. “And over there were two enormous pepper trees, male and female. I used to wonder how trees made it.” He laughed; Elaine offered an echo. The man paid no attention. “Modern gardeners don’t go for pepper and eucalyptus. They shed too much.” Uninvited he strode to the shade garden where azaleas and camellia shone pink and rose and white among polished foliage. “I used to resent it when she asked me to rake and carry, but in the blooming season . . . by God, it is the blooming season.” He took off his hat in obeisance.
    Dusty red hair curled above a tall brow.
    Elaine thought him too ardent but said gently, “I’m grateful to your foster-mother. Her garden’s one of the reasons we bought the place. And the privacy, too. It must have been pleasant to grow up here.”
    He was too thickly wrapped in memories to give attention to a stranger. Elaine followed while he strode along the path to the pool. Suddenly, “I laid these stones. The path was originally gravel. How well the dichondra’s done. What a job to pull out all the crabgrass. I got twenty-five cents an hour. But why should you care?”
    â€œI do. You made it lovely