The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories Read Online Free PDF

ground floor and basement in our house are not thick. The first time I heard that loud and strange exclamation coming from down below, I looked to my wife in her chair nearby for enlightenment. We were eating lunch, and, by coincidence, both of us happened to be holding potato chips in mid-air.
    “What is ‘Uh-Oh City’?”
    “That seems to be her war cry when she finds something interesting.”
    “Oh. I take it that means I’ll be seeing her soon? The egg salad is very good today. There’s something new in it?”
    “Horseradish. Beenie gave me the recipe. Isn’t it good?”
    “Scott, you’re back! What are these?”
    “Hello. They’re old New Yorker magazines, as you can see.”
    “I saw, all right. You want to keep them, or what? I found ’em down the cellar, but half are so rotten they don’t even have print on them any more.”
    She was right, but the scold in her voice reminded me of Miss Katsburg, my insufferable first-grade teacher. That was not a good memory.
    “Beenie, you’re here to clean the house, not clean it out. Leave the magazines, OK.”
    “Even the rotten ones? I could sort through ’em and—”
    “Even the rotten ones. I like rotten. I turn the pages more carefully.”
    “You’re an odd one, Scott.”
    “Thank you, Beenie. Just leave the magazines.”
    She reappeared several other times, holding mysterious or forgotten objects at arm’s length, wanting to know if they could be thrown out. On each occasion, Roberta and I enthusiastically agreed they could.
    The last time she trudged up, the stairs sounded heavier, more weighed down. No wonder—she had a television on her head, and looked like an African woman carrying her pot to the well.
    “My God, Beenie!”
    “Oh Beenie, what are you doing?!”
    “Bringing up treasure! Do you folks realize what you’ve got here? This’s a Brooker television. These things are collectors’ items! Some people say the Brooker was the best TV set ever made in America. Strong as a Model-T Ford.”
    My wife and I exchanged smirks. “That was the first TV we bought, and it was terrible from the moment we got it. Nothing but trouble. How many times did it break down?”
    Roberta looked at Beenie and shrugged as if the breakdowns were her fault. “At least five. Remember that terrible fat man who used to come and fix it?”
    The memory of his Vandyke-bearded face came to me like a blastful of exhaust from a dirty truck. “Craig Tenney! I remember the name written in yellow on his blue overalls. The worst! The only pompous TV repairman in the world. Not to mention the fact that he was also a crook ... Beenie, put that thing down. You’ll hurt yourself.”
    “Nope, that’s not true. Once you get it up on the head, your neck’ll pretty much support anything. Waddya want to do with it? Don’t leave it downstairs. I’m telling you, whether it works or not, it’s worth a good chunk to a collector.”
    “Well then, it’s yours if you’d like to have it.”
    She looked at me appraisingly. “How come you kept it if you don’t want it?”
    “Probably because I was too lazy to cart it to the dump. Really, if you want it, take it.”
    “You’ve got a deal. I know a man who’d be interested.”
    I hadn’t laid eyes on that set for years. It had lived so long in the basement that, even if I had seen it, I didn’t remember because it had grown invisible. Objects have a way of doing that when they are broken or serve no more function in our lives. Yet seeing it again like that in the light of day, returned once more to the middle of our living room where it had once owned the eyes of an entire family, I found myself remembering things about that set. Like the awful repairman who used to pontificate to me about the state of the world while purportedly fixing the damned machine.
    There were also nice memories. Like the whole gang of us sitting around that tube after dinner, eating hot-fudge sundaes and watching “Laugh-In” or “Star Trek”.