"Plain, Belva - Harvest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Plain Belva)

"Iris," her father remonstrated, "there are certain times when a little extravagance is called for. God knows your mother wastes nothing. But she doesn't mind dressing herself. I like to see my wife dressed up. And I'm sure Theo does too," he finished somewhat sternly.
Iris was conscious again of her dress, which had gone baggy from wear.
And again Anna changed the subject, asking Joseph whether they expected to open the Home in the summer. It was as if she had sensed Iris's discomfiture, almost as if, Iris thought, she could have guessed that money was another very uncomfortable subject.
Yet she could not have guessed, certainly not from the way the Sterns lived, how uncomfortable it actually was. Who would believe that their checkbook balance was so low that Iris was sometimes wary of writing a fifty-dollar check for the household?
She worried about what or whether Theo could be saving. When she asked him, he would smile and answer, "Enough. Let me worry about it. That's the husband's responsibility." He would kiss her cheek or pat her head as if she were a child and she would be left with resentment. And, as if she were a child, she thought, he brought unexpected gifts—adult toys—a blond alligator purse he had seen in a shop window, or a pair of gold cuffs studded with lapis lazuli and turquoise that they could not afford. Iris was careful about expenses; she had probably been made that way. When Papa's partner gave her as a
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wedding gift a complete flatware service of hand-wrought silver from Italy, she exchanged the heavy, oversized pieces for something lighter and easier to maintain.
"It would take hours to polish," she had explained. "We can't afford to pay someone to do it, and I have better things to do."
"What a pity," Anna had remarked. "I can't understand you." She had marveled at the magnificence of the chasing and swirling and would gladly have spent hours caring for it if it had been hers. But Iris wasn't Anna.
Joseph was leaving. "I'm sorry to run off, but I've got a two o'clock appointment. This was a real treat, a luxury." And he bent to kiss his wife and daughter.
When he was out of sight and hearing, Anna asked, "Are you feeling all right, Iris?"
Could one hide anything from those clear eyes?
"I'm fine."
"You've eaten practically nothing."
"I'm not hungry."
"I don't think you do feel all right."
Anna's thoughtful gaze went to the grass, where pigeons strutted, picking up fallen seeds. After a moment she spoke quietly.
"You can postpone your work or study for a few years, you know. It won't be too late for it then if you still want it."
"I'll want it." Fragmentary phrases, subliminal messages, flashed before Iris's eyes. Be somebody. . . . Show him. . . .
And she said firmly, "Things are changing, Mama. When I was in college, the dean told us that the first purpose of a liberal arts education was to make you a better wife and mother. In fact, I was just reading the same thing before in a magazine."
Tactful as always, smoothing and soothing, Anna replied, "Of course there has to be more in a woman's life than that. Yet there is a little something to be said for—what I mean is, an
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educated woman like you should offer herself first to her children. After all, you're not an immigrant like me."
"Don't say that about yourself. You were a good mother, always."
Anna's eyes filled suddenly. For a moment she did not speak. Then she said, "You did so much for your father and me when we lost Maury. I remember—" She stopped.
Remember. . . . Yes, how the storm had rattled the windows that night when the police came to tell them that their son was dead in a car wreck. The rattle of winter wind and rain. . . .
"And all that long sad time you understood how it was for us."
Iris wanted to say, but did not say, Yes, I can always feel for the lost and lonesome. I relate to them.
"Perhaps you don't realize what a comfort you were. We took strength from you."
Iris thought: She sees beneath my skin. She's worried about me. She's reminding me that I can be strong, which I know well enough.
"I'm glad I could help you, Mama."
"I think men take sorrows harder, don't you? Your father especially took strength from you."
"I think it depends on the man. Papa is very, very soft. He only likes to seem tough, isn't that so?"
Anna smiled now. "Yes, yes. Soft as custard inside. You and your children . . . you're his whole life, Iris!"
She's pleading with me to be happy, not to give them any trouble.
"Not his whole life. You're forgetting yourself."
"I'm not forgetting."
Perhaps unconsciously, Anna looked down at the hand on which the diamond flashed. Joseph had brought it home, Joseph made her wear it. The ring was the symbol of his achievement; the young man from the tenements had labored and
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risen high. Yet sometimes Iris wondered whether, under the serenity, the competence, and the devotion, her mother could be totally satisfied with the man she had married. They were so different! But that wasn't fair, she would think at once, ashamed of her doubt. No man would worship a woman as her father did if the two did not satisfy each other entirely.

How beautiful she is, Iris thought now. Men still linger near her even when younger women are in the room. How must it feel to be adored as Papa adores her?

Anna was very serious. "Iris, I ask you again, is everything all right? I don't want to intrude—"