Wide Blue Yonder Read Online Free PDF

Finally Ed put on a thoughtful face and said, “Of course. Absolutely. But I kept thinking how much Harve’s always taken to you and the little girl and I thought, well, maybe he’d enjoy seeing you.”
    Meaning, you could divorce a guy, but because you were a woman, you were still on the hook for the family obligations he couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of. Elaine tried to imagine what Frank would say if she was the one with the crazy uncle and somebody asked him to deal with it. She watched Ed gaze around the shop at the fabric displays. Every surface was heaped with color and pattern, like yards and yards of butterflies. Clearly none of it interested him. More womanish business, Ed’s face seemed to say.
    Elaine said, “I’ve always been fond of Harvey too. He’s never hurt anybody but himself.”
    “That’s what I’m worried about, Mrs. Sloan—”
    “Lindstrom.”
    “Beg pardon?”
    “Lindstrom, not Sloan.”
    Ed nodded to indicate that he would forget this immediately. “When I saw him last week I had to wonder if he was taking care of himself.”
    “He always has. Cashes his Social Security checks. Pays his bills. Functions. It might not seem like much of a life to you or me, but you can’t decide those things for people.”
    “He was buying cat food.”
    Elaine said patiently, “He’s got a cat.”
    “Oh. I was afraid …”
    “I can buy him vitamins, but I can’t promise he’ll take them. I can make a doctor’s appointment, but there’s no guarantee I can get him out of the house.”
    “If you could just check up on him, that would ease my mind,” said Ed, still concerned but beginning the process of handing off, retreating. She supposed she was only annoyed at him because he was trying to get her to do the decent thing, what she should have done anyway, regardless of how richly Frank had deserved divorcing. Poor Harvey. What had he done to deserve his lonely life?
    Ed Pauley was the same age as Harvey. There had to be a little anxious itch behind his good-neighbor concern, it had to be anxious, watching yourself age in the mirror of your friends’ faces. Ed’s own pink face was deflating, losing air. A big, bulky old man, going soft around the edges. Elaine didn’t know him all that well personally. He was only the kind of man you knew publicly. Chamber of Commerce Ed, Kiwanis Ed, glad-hander Ed. The hometown lawyer made very good. The thriving opposite of Harvey. Productive citizen. Wife and kids, grandkids. People to take care of him in his golden years. As Harvey had her, sort of.
    Because now that the obligation had been laid on her, she’d see it through. She believed in responsibilities. Acts of charity. They were positive things that you could balance against all the wreck-age and mistakes of your life. So far she had a business that worked, a marriage that hadn’t, and a daughter that the jury was still out on.
    After five years of grinding effort, the business was about to become an overnight success. A Chicago store was planning on carrying her line of home accessories. Elaine imported most of the fabric goods directly from an artisan’s cooperative she’d organized in rural India, in Bihar. Twice a year she went there to tendto its affairs and determine her new season’s order. She had invested in the rebuilt dye works and the water system that processed the industrial waste and provided the village with sewage treatment. There were times she marveled. It almost seemed as if all she had to do was aim herself at a goal, and after a time it was so. She understood those fables where someone smote the ground with a magic staff and a city, or a castle, or a fruited plain sprang forth. They were shorthand for enormous amounts of unimaginable labor. The cooperative kept fifty women employed in sewing circles where they produced gold-thread embroidery and tissue-fine blouses and other handwork, for the only money they had ever earned. When she visited, the women presented her