The Uses of Enchantment Read Online Free PDF Page A

here.”
    He gestured toward a crisscrossed pile of envelopes.
    “Quite a mess,” he repeated.
    He put his hands on his hips. He stared at the pile, as though willing it to ignite.
    “I read an article about estate planning on the airplane,” Mary said, after an awkward silence.
    “We don’t really own what you’d call an estate,” her father said.
    “It listed the top ten things people would do with their time if they knew they only had a week to live,” she said.
    “Ah,” her father said, not listening.
    “My point is that bill paying was pretty low on the list,” she said.
    Her father, she noticed, had taken the framed photographs down from the wall. This bothered her. Not that he had begun to strip the house of the few belongings he planned to take with him to the golf condo. She was bothered that she couldn’t remember which picture had once hung above the couch bed.
    “So is making lasagna noodles from scratch,” she said. Was it the photo of their 1973 family waiting to board the Woods Hole ferry? “So is putting an old pet to sleep.” Was it the photo of her parents straddling a tiny moped on their Bermuda honeymoon?
    No, she thought. It was the framed letter from Governor Edward J. King in sympathetic reference to Abigail Lake. Or it was the photo of one long-ago Halloween, Regina dressed as a queen, Mary as a hand-me-down witch, and Gaby as a table.
    “So is making amends with estranged family members,” she said.
    Her father didn’t respond.
    “Most people just want to get a manicure and go skydiving,” she said.
    Her father ground his teeth, producing a squeaky Styrofoam sound that meant he’d had quite enough of something.
    “How’s the boyfriend?” her father asked. “The one who makes shelves?”
    As opposed to the one who makes recycled packaging out of old newspapers, she wanted to say. The one who makes deck chairs from a composite of unendangered hardwood pulp and natural glue. Her string of boyfriends were crafts-oriented people with a solid liking for the outdoors, an environmental business aesthetic, and a full head of hair; she’d met them all at the vegan bakery where she ate lunch every afternoon. She ate at the vegan bakery because it was the only place to eat within walking distance of the Grove School. They traveled distances to eat there aggressively on purpose, which partly explained why each of these relationships had failed, and maybe why her adult life, to this point, possessed a temporary feel. After a childhood spent plotting and attempting to assert control over the uncontrollable, she’d downsized her ambitions to practically nothing. Her attachments now, like her life in general, were a composite of pure, pure accidents.
    But in fact she didn’t know how the current boyfriend was. She hadn’t called him once since she’d left. Nobody in her family knew his name (it was Dan), and thinking of him as the boyfriend had made it very easy not to call him. Her life—and it was a not bad life, not while she was in it—was suddenly reduced to a series of nouns to which she felt a very slim connection. The boyfriend. The job. The West.
    “He’s fine,” she said. “I guess.”
    “Will he be coming to visit you while you’re here?” her father said.
    Implicit in this question was the fact that he assumed she was not staying. And she wasn’t staying, not after the house sold. Was she? Still, she felt hurt by the fact that he didn’t appear to care one way or the other.
    “I’m not sure, Dad,” she said. “I really barely know the guy, to be honest. He’s more like—my buddy.”
    Her father nodded. “Buddies are good,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a buddy.”
    “I guess not…”
    “Your mum and I were never buddies. Not that I wanted her to be my buddy. That’s what the golf course is for.”
    “Come on, Dad, Mum was your buddy,” Mary said, not knowing what else to say. Other than Father and whimsy , no two words less belonged in the same