The Point of Vanishing - Maryka Biaggio (large ebook reader TXT) 📗

bad. I’m so accustomed to financial failure and money-fussing from my parents that Nick’s wage-earning rather amazes me. Imagine him turning into a real money maker. Wouldn’t it be a grand joke? Not on me, but on my parents, my whole bringing up, and my gypsy-like ways.

I sometimes long for the fleet-footed Nick I walked beside when we trekked the Appalachian Trail and wandered from Spain to Germany. That was more or less his Wanderjahr, and I guess I should be grateful I met him when I did. I enjoyed a side of him that most people don’t know, at least not the people he works with. They only see this dedicated fellow who loves his work. But I know deep inside he’s a bold and daring man.

Anyway, that’s not what I intended to write about. I meant to say he’s managed a raise recently. And if he can climb his way up at Polaroid, I may be able to work a little less. For now, however, we’re resigned to me keeping my stenographer’s job since Nick insists we save a few dollars along the way.

The Congregational Society has gotten a bit less tedious of late. Just as I was about to tear my hair out over the string of mundane memos and dull documents, I was asked to help an amazing woman write about her India sojourn. So, I happily take dictation from her and edit her material. It’s like having a private adventure on the steamy streets of Bombay and around the dusty countryside. I’m afraid that’s as close as I’ll get to anything exotic for the foreseeable future. Unless . . .

I haven’t told Nick yet, but my friend Gloria and I want to put together a troupe to sail to South America the summer after this coming. Ever since I read Inca Land, I’ve dreamed of hiking to Machu Picchu. Wouldn’t it be grand to rediscover the land of the mysterious Incas? And I simply can’t go on without the prospect of some escapade to look forward to. It’s far enough off that I can bide my time, for now, research the logistics of the expedition, and figure out how to seduce Nick away from work. And, I suppose, there’s the matter of finding the money. It’d be swell if it came off. After all, the sweat and saving that are required to pull off high adventure are always worth the effort. In fact, it’s the only thing worth that sort of effort.

Last week, on a lark, I started an interpretive dance class, the kind of dance that’s done barefoot. Two nights a week, I strain limb and brain with the most tantalizing body expression. The instructor has studied in Europe and rather calls out one’s notion of what dance is all about. I’m only just beginning to understand the seam between idea and movement, but the magic and allure of it satisfy me in a most profound way.

So, you see, I’m not completely given over to the banal, at least not yet. Here’s to life’s wonders and unpredictability!

As ever,

Barbara

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

BARBARA AT TWENTY-THREE

Bradford, VT, July 1937

Barbara stood beside her father, looking down on the tree-lined Connecticut River. From the bluff, she could see, but not hear, the ripple of its shallows. “Transfixing, isn’t it?”

Her father, too, gazed on the sunlit river. “And calming.”

After a recent exchange of letters, the most congenial between them in years, he’d invited her to visit. And it was quite pleasant getting reacquainted. He seemed to have mellowed as if time and trials had ground down his brusqueness. But between his pasty complexion, sagging jowls, and veiny hands, he looked all of his fifty years. No, she promised herself, I’ll not let myself turn so shabby with age.

She found his household teeming with cheerfulness. He’d recently published a string of articles, which enabled them to afford this new house. Of course, under the circumstances, an apartment wouldn’t do, for he and Margaret had turned into an honest-to-goodness family, with a lively two-year-old girl and darling baby boy.

Their new residence was quite charming—a two-story farmhouse with a view of the rolling hills of Vermont and New Hampshire. True, the house and property had been neglected for years, but with a good scrubbing, yard raking, and fence-mending, it’d show its country quaintness again. And once she and her father wrestled this snarl of a garden under control, she imagined it, too, would yield treasures.

Her father dragged on his Lucky Strike and shifted his rake closer to his side. “Should we attack those morning glory vines? They’re choking the climbing rose.”

He retrieved a step ladder from the garden shed and positioned it beside the pergola. Barbara scurried up and, leaning over the pergola’s arch, grabbed handfuls of vines and cut through them.

Her father traced and extricated the segments. “Do you understand what Nick does at Polaroid? I mean the science of it?”

“In a general way,” Barbara said.

“Well, you’d better explain it. So I can have an intelligent conversation with him. He seems to hold back with me.”

As Barbara reached into the maze of vines, the rose thorns pricked her skin. “He experiments with plastics and how they make light behave.”

“And how’s that?”

“Plastic can be used to filter light, so you can do things like reduce glare on automobile headlights or see objects more clearly underwater.”

“Strange, isn’t it—you, ending up with a science man?”

“No stranger than a lot of other things.” Barbara caught his eye and grinned. “You, having three wives. Me having half-siblings. Helen publishing one book after another.”

“I suppose so,” he said, turning his back on her.

Well, Barbara thought, I guess he doesn’t want to talk about any of that. She tugged at the tangled vines. “What are you writing these days?”

“I’ve got a few reviews in the works for The Saturday Review. And a semi-regular column with The Atlantic Monthly, mostly about language usage.” He swiped his forearm over his brow. “And your job? Do you enjoy it?”

“It’s more necessity