In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff Read Free Book Online Page B

he had ever thought or said could make a woman want to live again. “That was beautiful,” he said when Ruth had finished the poem. “How about an encore?”
    â€œThat’s the only poem I ever wrote except for one other, which is pretty personal.” Ruth said that she couldn’t write unless something made her do it, some really strong emotion.
    â€œThen read something.”
    She slid a book from the shelf, opened it and cleared her throat. “‘Sunrise near Monterey,’” she said, “by Francis X. Dillon.” She glanced up at Brooke. “Oh,” she said, “I love how you look at me.”
    â€œRead,” Brooke said. He forced himself to smile and shake his head in the right places. After a time he began to enjoy it, and even allowed himself to believe what it was saying: that the world was beautiful and we were beautiful, and that we could be more beautiful if we just let ourselves go—if we shouted when we wanted to shout, ran naked when we wanted to run naked, embraced when we wanted to embrace.
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    Riley, wearing a green jacket with a plaid tie and plaid pants, came to Brooke’s room the next morning. “You told me you wanted to get an early start,” he said. “I hope this isn’t too early for you.”
    Brooke felt Riley’s gaze go over his shoulder to the bed. Hehad considered messing it up a little, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Now he wished he had. “You should have called,” he said.
    Riley grinned. “I thought you might be up.”
    Heartsick, Brooke said very little on the drive home. Riley talked a blue streak and didn’t seem to notice. He described the troubles he was having with the university press that was bringing out his new book, and gave Brooke a lot of advice on how to deal with editors. He made an anecdote out of his struggle to get Abbot to his room the night before, and as they passed women on the road he rated their faces.
    Riley’s wife was standing at the picture window. She waved as Brooke pulled up to the house. Riley got his suitcase out of the back seat and stuck his head in the door just as Brooke was putting the car in gear. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t know what happened last night and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned I’ve never heard of anyone named Ruth.”
    â€œIt wasn’t like that,” Brooke said.
    â€œIt never is,” Riley said. He rapped the roof of the car with his knuckles and turned up the walk to his house.
    Brooke decided not to tell his wife what he had done. In the past she had known everything about him, and it pleased him to be the man she thought him to be. Now he was different from what his wife thought, and if he were honest he would hurt her terribly. Brooke thought he had no right to do this. He would have to pretend that things were the same. He owed her that. It seemed hypocritical to him, but he could not think of a better way to settle the matter.
    Without really being aware of it, Brooke saw the events of his life as forming chapters, and when he felt a chapter drawing to a close he liked to tie it up with an appropriate sentiment. Never again, he decided, would he sit in the back of the church and watch Riley. From now on he would sit in the front of the church and let Riley, knowing what he knew, watch him. He wouldkneel before Riley as we must all, he thought, kneel before one another.
    Of course the chapter now ending for Professor Brooke was not ending for everyone else. Throughout that winter he found, in his mailbox at the university, anonymous love poems in envelopes with no return address.
    And Brooke’s wife, unpacking his clothes, smelled perfume on his necktie. Then she went through the laundry hamper and discovered the same heavy scent all over one of his shirts. There had to be an explanation, but no matter how long she sat on the edge of the bed and held her head