The Theoretical Foot by M. F. K. Fisher Read Free Book Online Page B

but putting it into ordinary if somewhat oddly-sorted-out words, so as not to startle those around them.
    I wish I had a brother who’d speak to me that way, Sue thought. A brother might be so comforting.
    Sue blinked as she stepped out at the top of the stairs into the white airy brightness of the little kitchen. They were all apparently seized by the same violent briskness as soon as they came within range of Sara, who stood putting glasses on a pewter tray that was already piled with silver and plates. Without stopping her work Sara began to speak to them and her tone sounded almost cross.
    â€œAbout time! Dan, bring up some beer, will you? And Nor, you take that tray out and fix a table on the terrace, please. Susan will help you. And Tim, will you please go up and tell Nan, for God’s sake, to stop writing and come down here. Lucy, too, of course.”
    Sara scowled at the tray, then muttered, “Napkins,” then looked up quickly and cried sharply, “Oh wait, Tim, here’s Nan!”
    There was a light soft sound of someone running across the living room and taking the pantry steps in one stride. Sue held her breath, thinking, What next? Who might this be? She was almost dizzy now with excitement and aspirin and gin and the beer she had at the casino.
    She gave one look at the small figure that seemed to fly into the pantry and pose there, then felt everyone look at her as she gasped. “Oh! You’re Anne Garton Temple!”
    Her cheeks were enflamed. She felt herself gaping, looking—she knew—like a moonstruck monkey, but she simply wasn’t able to stop it. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of staring at the newcomer, Sue turned to Joe and asked reproachfully, “You didn’t tell me?”
    Then everybody laughed and Joe said, “Hell, Sue, I thought everybody knew Anne Garton Temple was Tim’s sister. And I hadn’t realized,” he said, now grinning at Nan, “that we’d finally be meeting you.”
    Nan blushed and nodded and Tim walked quickly over and put an arm about her fragile shoulders.
    â€œPeople usually say it the other way around,” Tim said. “That I’m Nan’s brother rather than she’s my sister.” He looked—quite without malice—into her upturned face.
    They were the two loveliest people in the world, Sue decided, but the loveliest. She stood numbly as the introductions were made, then followed Honor out onto the long sunny terrace, Sue’s mind still thrilled with the vision of the tiny fair-haired woman with Tim’s arm lovingly around her.
    How can anyone that famous be so little? Sue thought. Why she’s hardly bigger than I am. And she looks so young, as young as the pictures on her books. But she can’t be, Sue argued. I got my first book of her poems just as I’d finished Shelley, that was at least six years ago and I know she’s in all the anthologies of modernist poets at school. She had to be forty, more. But she can’t be, shelooks no older than Sara. Oh dear, I wonder if I’ll have done anything to be so famous by the time I’ve lived that long?
    She sighed, rubbed her forehead. She now felt suddenly very tired and so sleepy she could hardly move. Her eyes hurt when she looked toward the wide and glittering lake that lay almost at their feet, yet also far, far below. Beyond the lake the hard black bulk of the mountains on the other shore felt almost like a physical blow.
    How could she act in a way that made her seem so light and silly with all this sound around her and such a bad cold in her head?
    â€œI really had no idea,” she protested. Her own voice was now so husky it startled her.
    â€œYou mean about Nan?”
    â€œYes, that she was—that she is—what she is. I never thought I’d meet her. I have all her books. And plays! When I was in Chicago a year ago I saw Hunter, No More! four times. I thought it was wonderful