Read Tiny Little Thing for Free Online

him of Jane Doe’s curving elbow. “There
is
a girl, I guess.”
    As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized she was the reason he came here to lily-scented Brookline that hot May morning, to its chintz upholstery and its shepherdess coffee service, to Granny herself, unchanged since his childhood.
    Jane Doe. What to do with her. What to do with himself.
    “What’s her name?” asked Granny.
    He grinned again. “I don’t know. I’ve hardly spoken to her.”
    “Hardly
spoken
to her?”
    “I think she’s engaged.”
    “Engaged, or married?”
    “Engaged, I think. I didn’t see a band. Anyway, she doesn’t seem married.”
    “Well, if she’s only engaged, there’s nothing to worry about.” Granny stirred in another spoonful of sugar. The silver tinkled expensively against the Meissen. “What kind of girl is she?”
    “The nice kind.”
    “Good family?”
    “I told you, I don’t know her name.”
    “Find out.”
    “Hell, Granny, I—”
    “Language, Caspian.”
    He set down the coffee and strode back to the window. “Why the hell did I come here, anyway? I don’t know.”
    “Don’t blaspheme. You can use whatever foul words you like in that . . . that
platoon
of yours, but you will not take the Lord’s name in vain in my house.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Now. To answer your question. Why did you come here? You came here to ask my advice, of course.”
    “And what’s your advice, Granny?” he asked the window, the empty street outside, the identical white-trimmed Georgian pile of bricks staring back at him.
    The silver clinked. Granny, cutting herself a slice of cake, placing it on a delicate shepherdess plate, taking a bite. “I am amazed, Caspian, so amazed and
perplexed
by the way your generation makes these things so unnecessarily complicated. The fact is, you only have one question to ask yourself, one question to answer before you do a single first thing.”
    “Which is?”
    “Do you want her for a wife or for a good time?”
    The postman appeared suddenly, between a pair of trees on the opposite side of the street, wearing short pants and looking as if he might drop dead.
    Caspian fingered the edge of the chintz curtain and considered the words
good time
, and the effortless way Granny spoke them. What the hell did Granny know about a good-time girl? Not that he wanted to know. Jesus. “There’s no in between?”
    A short pause, thick with disapproval. “No.”
    “All right. Then what?”
    “Well, it depends. If you want a good time, you walk up to her, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”
    “Easy enough. And the other?”
    Granny set down her plate. The house around them lay as still as outdoors, lifeless, empty now of the eight children she’d raised, the husband at his office downtown, if by
office
you meant
mistress’s apartment
. She was the lone survivor, the last man standing in the Brookline past. The floorboards vibrated beneath the carpet as she rose to her feet and walked toward him, at the same dragging tempo as the postman across the street.
    She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he managed not to flinch.
    “Now, don’t you know that, Caspian? You walk up, introduce yourself, and ask her to dinner.”

Tiny, 1966
    A t half past five o’clock, I push open the bottom sash of the bedroom window and prop my torso into the hot salt-laden air to look for my husband.
    The beach is crammed with Hardcastle scions of all ages, running about the sand in skimpy swimsuits. Or
frolicking
: yes, that’s the word. A cluster of younger ones ply their shovels on a massive sand castle, assisted by a father or two; the younger teenagers are chasing one another, boys versus girls, testing out all those mysterious new frissons under the guise of play. Hadn’t I done that, between thirteen and sixteen, when the Schuylers summered on Long Island? I probably had. Or maybe my sisters had, and I’d watched from under my umbrella, reading a book, safe from freckles and