Wish You Were Here Read Online Free Page B

for taxes on the house and pin money. A house without a mortgage is a wonderful inheritance, and Harry and Fair were happy to move from their rented house on Myrtle Street. Of course, when Harry asked Fair to leave, he complained bitterly that he had always hated living in her parents’ house.
    â€œFitz-Gilbert Hamilton is ugly as sin, but he’s never going to need food stamps and he’s a Richmond lawyer of much repute—at least that’s what Ned says.”
    â€œToo much fuss over this marriage. You marry in haste and repent in leisure.”
    â€œDon’t be sour.” Susan’s eyes shot upward.
    â€œThe happiest day of my life was when I married Pharamond Haristeen and the next happiest day of my life was when I threw him out. He’s full of shit and he’s not going to get any sympathy from me. God, Susan, he’s running all over town, the picture of the wounded male. He has dinner every night with a different couple. I heard that Mim Sanburne offered her maid to do his laundry for him. I can’t believe it.”
    Susan sighed. “He seems to relish being a victim.”
    â€œWell, I sure don’t.” Harry practically spat. “The only thing worse than being a veterinarian’s wife is being a doctor’s wife.”
    â€œThat’s not why you want to divorce him.”
    â€œNo, I guess not. I don’t want to talk about this.”
    â€œYou started it.”
    â€œDid I?” Harry seemed surprised. “I didn’t mean to. . . . I’d like to forget the whole thing. We were talking about Little Marilyn Sanburne.”
    â€œWe were. Little Marilyn will be deeply hurt if Stafford doesn’t show up, and Mim will die if he does—her event-of-the-year marriage marred by the arrival of her black daughter-in-law. Life would be much simpler if Mim would overcome her plantation mentality.” Susan drummed the table again.
    â€œYeah, but then she’d have to join the human race. I mean, she’s emotionally impotent and wants to extend her affliction universally. If she changed her thinking she might have to feel something, you know? She might have to admit that she was wrong and that she’s wounded her children, wounded and scarred them.”
    Susan sat silent for a moment, viewing the remnants of the once-huge sub. “Yeah—here, Tucker.”
    â€œHey, hey, what about me?”
Mrs. Murphy yelled.
    â€œOh, here, you big baby.” Harry shoved over her plate. She was full.
    Mrs. Murphy ate what was left except for the tomatoes. As a kitten, she once ate a tomato and vowed never again.
    Harry strolled back to the post office, and the rest of the day ran on course. Market dropped by some knucklebones. Courtney picked up the mail while her dad talked.
    After work Harry walked back home. She liked the two-mile walk in the mornings and afternoons. Good exercise for her and the cat and the dog. Once home, she washed her old Superman-blue truck, then weeded her garden. She cleaned out the refrigerator after that and before she knew it, it was time to go to bed.
    She read a bit, Mrs. Murphy curled up by her side with Tucker snoring at the end of the bed. She turned out her light, as did the other residents of Crozet ensconced behind their high hedges, blinds, and shutters.
    It was the end of another day, peaceful and perfect in its way. Had Harry known what tomorrow would bring, she might have savored the day even more.

2
    Mrs. Murphy performed a somersault while chasing a grasshopper. She never could resist wigglies, as she called them. Tucker, uninterested in bugs, cast a keen eye for squirrels foolish enough to scamper down Railroad Avenue. The old tank watch, her father’s, on Harry’s wrist read 6:30 A . M . and the heat rose off the tracks. It was a real July Virginia day, the kind that compelled weathermen and weatherwomen on television to blare that it would be hot, humid, and hazy with no relief in