City and town life -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"Maybe I did," says he. "I forget. I don't know but I did for a while.
But I think of it this way now."
She laughed. "Why," she said, "I was getting to _prefer_ hollyhocks."
I noticed that particular. Then we came round the corner of the house.
And the street looked so peaceful and lovely that I knew just how he
felt when he said:
"Let's us three go and take a drive in the country. Can't we? We could
get a carriage somewhere, couldn't we?"
And she says like a little girl, "Oh, yes, let's. But don't you s'pose
we could rent a car here from somebody?"
I liked to look at his look when he looked at her. He done it now.
"A car?" he said. "But you're nervous when I drive. Wouldn't you rather
have a horse?"
"Well, but you'd rather have a car," she said. "And I'd like to know you
were liking that best! And, truly, I don't think I'd care much--now."
Then I took a hand. "You look here," I says. "I'd really ought to step
down to Mis' Merriman's to a committee meeting. I've been trying to make
myself believe I didn't need to go, but I know I ought to. And you two
take your drive."
They fussed a little, but that was the way we arranged it. I went off to
my meeting before I saw which they did get to go in. But that didn't
make any difference. All the way to the meeting I kept thinking about
lilacs and hollyhocks and horses and cars. And I saw what had happened
to those two: they loved each other so much that they'd kind of lost
track of the little things that they thought had mattered so much, and
neither could very well remember which they had really had a leaning
towards of all the things.
"It's a kind of _each-otherness_!" I says to myself. "It's a new thing.
That ain't giving-upness. Giving-upness is when you still want what you
give up. This is something else. It's each-otherness. And you can't get
it till you _care_."
But then I thought of something else. It wasn't only them--it was me! It
was like I had caught something from them. For of course I'd rather have
gone driving with those two than to have gone to any committee meeting,
necessary or not. But I knew now that I'd been feeling inside me that of
course they didn't want an old thing like me along, and that of course
they'd rather have their drive alone, horse _or_ automobile. And so I'd
kind of backed out according. Being with them had made me feel a sort of
each-otherness too. It was wonderful. I thought about it a good deal.
And when I came home and see that they'd got back first, and were
sitting on the porch with no lights in the house yet, except the one
burning dim in the hall, I sat upstairs by my window quite a while. And
I says to myself:
"If only there was a bride and groom in every single house all up and
down the streets of the village--"
And I could almost think how it would be with everybody being decent to
each other and to the rest, just sheer because they were all happy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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