The End of the Book by Porter Shreve Read Free Book Online Page A

I’d asked if he’d been to the doctor lately he’d laughed and said he was trying natural remedies, as in Let nature take its course . “And no, Dhara, I’m not overdramatizing when I tell you he’s never looked worse. Having a father is not like having a cat; they don’t just wander off when they get old, crawl under some neighbor’s porch, and exhale their last breath. Abandoning him now is something I refuse to live with.”
    Dhara stopped me right there. “If your father moves in, I refuse to live with you.”
    â€œBe reasonable.” I reached for the bill.
    â€œIt’s him or me,” she said. “Your choice.”

4
    George never did go back to work that Friday. Lazar’s request that he return soon because “I’ve been meaning to tell you something” faded into a quiet corner of his mind. At the jewelry counter he wasted little time choosing a one-and-a-half-carat Marquise ring with a brilliant diamond in the middle and sparkling clusters at the edges. He paid five hundred dollars, a third of his annual salary, and exhausted most of his savings account. But no sooner had he bought the ring and called a coachman to take him and his precious cargo home in the safety of a covered landau than he began to worry that the ring was not impressive enough for the likes of Margaret Lazar.
    At the boardinghouse he climbed the narrow staircase and sat at his desk. He took the ring from its velvet box and held it to the single gaslight that illuminated his Spartan quarters. The saleswoman had urged him to consider a larger diamond, of superior color and clarity, but given his uncertain future at work in the regime of Prove They Need It , he could not afford to go into debt. Though the ring might not have been the most expensive in the case, here, in George’s room, it glittered like an animate eye looking back at him. As the light ricocheted from facet to facet he told himself that of course the ring was good enough. How could Margaret expect anything more from one of her father’s employees, a salary-earner without name or fortune?
    At the birthday party he had wanted to ask what she saw in him, but he was thrown by her confession, and such a question would have been foolish, anyway. She grew up with money; he grew up with none. No sense drawing attention to the fact. He would ask her to marry him, and she would say yes. He was good enough for her, good enough for anyone. But after he climbed into bed and pulled the layers of wool blankets up to his eyes, trying to warm his bones in these shoddy quarters that put up only the frailest resistance to the Chicago winter, he was beset with further doubts.
    Through the thin walls a man and a woman—a streetcar conductor and his pregnant wife—were having an argument. They had gone at it before, and weren’t the only quarrelers at Ma Kavanagh’s. George had long ago learned to tune out his neighbors’ voices when he’d come home from work still adrift in the cartoon world of Tidy Town. And Ma, who lived in a top-floor apartment with her unmarried daughter, only rarely thumped her broom handle on the planks or yelled into the stairwell: Keep it down! Everyone turned a deaf ear to fights on the property, even to the sounds of men striking their wives, of plates crashing to the floor, and of the metronomic creaking of bedsprings that so often followed, like defective apologies.
    I told you we’re not leaving early , the streetcar conductor said. I put in for the weekend shift, and we can’t afford to give up the wages. Your mother will have to wait until Christmas Eve .
    But we promised a longer visit this time , his wife said. You never let me go back to Belle Plaine .
    If you had a job we wouldn’t be in this spot. But you’re too good for factory work. Like some kind of princess .
    Some princess I am in this tenement, living with a man like you. Twenty-nine and already a