Read Edith’s Diary for Free Online Page A

great-aunt Melanie.
    The boys came back from Cliffie’s room. Edith hoped they had made a date. They both had bicycles. The boys Cliffie went around with were younger than he, and it was absurd. It wasn’t that Cliffie wanted to be a leader, a big shot, just that his contemporaries found him boringly young himself. Just as Edith was about to ask Derek if he could come for lunch next Saturday, Gert said:
    ‘Oh Edie, Derek’s taking clarinet lessons now. Isn’t that something?’ She spoke as if Derek had started the lessons on his own, and he probably had.
    ‘How nice!’ Edith said. ‘Where?’
    ‘Oh-h.’ Derek waggled his head in embarrassment. ‘Washington Crossing. It’s a group lesson, three of us. But it’s – interesting.’
    ‘Got your own clarinet?’ Edith asked.
    ‘I’m buying it on the instalment plan.’
    ‘With his allowance,’ Norm said.
    ‘And that’s not very regular,’ Derek put in.
    ‘No comments,’ Norm said, ‘or we’ll make you take a summer job. Like the rich kids.’
    George got up creakily. ‘Edith – must be retiring. Tired. Excellent dinner.’ George relied upon his cane to begin walking.
    Derek, the nearest, got up from the floor where he had been sitting. ‘Help you, sir?’
    Cliffie, also on the floor, didn’t move, but watched George as if he were an animal in the zoo, remote, of mild interest.
    ‘No, no. Night, everybody,’ said George.
    Brett at least perfunctorily helped George out of the room, started him on the stairs.
    George did rather all right on his own, if he did things slowly. His cheeks weren’t as pink as when he had arrived, but then he hadn’t acted on Edith’s and Brett’s suggestion to sit out on the lawn in a deckchair, and he certainly didn’t take any walks.
    The atmosphere was decidedly more relaxed after George was upstairs.
    ‘Really – he’s living with you folks now, huh?’ Norm asked.
    ‘You could call it that,’ said Brett.
    ‘What does he do all day?’ Gert asked.
    ‘Reads a lot,’ Edith said. ‘I get books out of the library for him all the time. Then there’re our books. He even reads some of Cliffie’s encyclopaedias. Then he sleeps a lot.’
    ‘Well, is he – going to a doctor at all?’ This from Gert.
    ‘No, his main doctor’s in New York, and it seems – well, I have to take him once a week to Trenton, Saturdays, because the New York doctor sent his reports there. Records, I mean.’ Brett took a breath. ‘They take a look —’
    ‘It’s his back, isn’t it?’ asked Gert.
    ‘Yes, they do pal – palpation,’ Brett said in his earnest way, and for some reason they all laughed. Cliffie the loudest.

3
    It was a morning blighted by the return of a self-addressed, stamped manila envelope, formerly folded in half, containing Edith’s article ‘Why Not Recognize Red China?’ which she had sent to the
New Republic
.
They wrote:
     
    We remember your earlier two articles and we liked them, but this isn’t for us right now, mainly because your main argument is covered in an article already scheduled. However we thank you for your submission.
    Edith had once had an agent, Irene Dougal on West 23rd Street. But she felt she didn’t write enough to warrant an agent, and had Irene really done her much good? Edith had sold just as much on her own, four things, so the score was 4–4, and the agent took ten percent. She had had no correspondence with Irene Dougal in a long time.
    It was mid-December, and it seemed ages since the weekend in November when they had taken the car and rambled over Pennsylvania. Edith had asked the Quickmans, who lived next door, if they could look in on George and see that he was managing to get his own meals – which Edith had prepared as best she could in advance and put into the fridge. Frances Quickman had also fed Mildew. Edith and Brett and Cliffie had stayed a night in a motel near New Holland, another night in Lancaster, Amish country. Edith had bought half a dozen