Evenings at Five by Gail Godwin Read Free Book Online Page B

Christina’s mother would announce when Freddie’s Packard pulled in across the street.
    “Do you think they buy it for her by the case or what?” Christina’s grandmother wondered.
    “They certainly can’t buy anything decent around here,” Christina’s mother would say. “They probably stock up when they go on their little trips to Atlanta.”
    Rudy had loved this story and often told it to people. He was fascinated by southern speech and manners and the secrets they covered up yet didn’t cover up.

    Christina measured exactly one full portion into Rudy’s cordial glass. Then she recorked the Gigondas (which Rudy had chosen because it was called “Oratorio”) and scrutinized its remaining level. Four evenings’ worth, if she was careful. (This advice is included in the price of the story.)
    “And then I’ll go from there, creating my own rituals. Taking possession, in nightly increments, of all you meant to me.”
    For the second time since Rudy’s death, Christina sat down in his magisterial Stickley armchair on the other side of the fireplace.

Christina’s sofa, Rudy’s chair
    Chapter Ten

    The first time in the chair had been back in April, just after Christina had finished with her seven days of shiva-salons and was alone again in the evenings.
    Father Paul and Eliza, a parishioner she especially liked, had showed up around five to see how she was getting on, and after a few minutes of warm, intelligent, dry-eyed conversation with them, Christina found herself whooping and wailing and totally out of control.
    “I just wish I knew where he was,” she managed to blurt between sobs.
    “Have you prayed?” asked Father Paul.
    “I’m not sure I can.”
    “Have you asked Rudy to help you?”
    “No.”
    “Have you read the Burial Office?”
    “No.”
    “Would you like to do that now?”
    “Yes.”
    While Father Paul went out to his car to get his Bible and
The Book of Common Prayer,
Eliza snuggled up next to Christina on the sofa and wept with her like a sister in grief. A year ago Eliza had had to leave her dying father’s bedside in England in order to fly home to her husband, who had just had a stroke.
    “If only I had known it was our last night together,” Christina choked out, “I would have stayed with him.”
    “I know, I know,” said Eliza. “You wanted to be there. All this time you’ve been with him and you feel you let him down at the end. You feel like the disciples did about falling asleep in the garden.”
    “Where should I sit?” Christina asked Father Paul when he returned.
    “Where would you like to sit?” he asked.
    And that was when she chose Rudy’s chair.
    Father Paul dropped cross-legged to the floor like a yogi and spread his open books out on the altar of the coffee table. Eliza sat in the black leather chair, which, for some reason, unlike its matching sofa, had escaped the ravages of the cats.
    “We’ll take this slowly,” said Father Paul, and waited while Christina went through another cycle of wild crying and gasping. While her body was succumbing to these paroxysms, her mind coolly registered how impatient she had been all her life and how she projected this impatience onto others:
Surely Eliza must be dying to get home to Jack, and Father Paul has had a long day and wishes I would pull myself together so we could get on with it and he could go home and have his supper.
    But Father Paul gave no signs of wanting to get on with it. When he did begin reading the burial service and selections from scripture, it was in an alert, rather surprised way, as though he were coming upon the words himself for the first time.
    It was new for Christina not to follow along in the prayer book, rushing ahead with her eyes. She allowed the words to pass over or soak into her as they saw fit.
    Bud crouched solemnly on the rug, very much a part of the gathering. At one point, he arose, stretched sinuously, and ambled off to the kitchen, from where they could hear him