Read This Sweet Sickness for Free Online Page A

and also because of his desire to keep it secret for a while. But Annabelle—one didn’t see a girl like her every day or every year or every lifetime. David could see, when he walked down the street with her, that a few people realized this. Everybody who knew her liked her, and pitied her because she was unappreciated at home. Her brothers had always ruled the roost. Annabelle was the cleaning girl, the cook, their shirt washer and ironer, and if she could play the piano, that was nice, they’d let her, but it shouldn’t take her away from her chores. Annabelle had had two years of college, had had to stop for lack of money, and then she had won a scholarship to study the piano, and that had had to stop because her father had a stroke and her mother needed help. David had been so certain, so arrogant, so indignant at her wretched life, he had not even spoken of it much to Annabelle, except to say once or twice, with more violent words that he did not utter choking his throat, “I’ll take you out of all this and soon, very soon.” He was twenty-six then. He had been working at a research laboratory in Oakley for very little pay, and he had intended to go back, but Annabelle changed his plans. He decided to look for a job with a commercial firm, and he had answered the advertisement of Cheswick Fabrics in Froudsburg, New York. He had not set a date for his return to La Jolla, but he had said he would be back at least for a weekend in two or three months, and maybe less. They had known each other six weeks when he left for the east, not long, perhaps, to know someone before marriage, but by then David knew Annabelle was going to be his wife. It was inevitable and right, and it seemed to him that she knew it too.
    Perhaps he had tried to hint some of this to his uncle and aunt, he couldn’t really remember, but he had sensed that both of them looked down on the Stanton family. It might be true, David thought, that the Stantons had less money than the Kelseys, but was the worth of families to be judged by money? If her brothers drank and loafed around the house, was that Annabelle’s fault? David’s father, Bert’s brother, had left enough money for David’s upbringing plus his education, and in fact nobody in the Kelsey family had ever had to worry about money, but not everybody had that advantage. Bert had a comfortable job with an insurance firm, and he had had the job for thirty years. Every now and then, Bert would refer to his brother Arthur’s recklessness in business with a sad shake of his head, but David’s father had not died poor, and his mother, too, had contributed money from her family. When David was ten, his father had died of pneumonia, and four years later his mother had been killed in a car accident. His uncle and aunt had raised him like a son as far as his physical comforts were concerned, had praised him and been proud of his record in schools. Bert had been shy about accepting the role of father in every sense, but David had not minded that. Bert was a good-natured, benevolent guardian uncle. His wife was less intelligent and more superficial, hanging onto her youth quite successfully at forty-two. Only her letters sounded old, full of outdated snobbism, practical advice, and inquiries as to his finances.
    David wondered what his mother would have thought of Annabelle, whether her own willfulness would have prompted her to say, “Go ahead and get her,” or if the financial and social considerations would have made her against a marriage. David was a little afraid of his mother: in the memories he had of her, he was never more than fourteen, shorter than she, more shy than she, and hampered by schools, infinitely less free. His mother would charter a plane to go to Minnesota or to Florida, would telephone long distance to settle a business matter of his father’s. And from another room where they talked together, David would hear his