Read Tolstoy and the Purple Chair for Free Online

been brought home from the shelter as a gift for Michael. He was a black-and-white longhair. Sweet in disposition, he meowed rarely and never scratched the furniture. But he did have one fault. Every once in a while he would pee, just a tiny, little bit, on the purple chair. It was as if he were marking the chair as his beloved chair and his alone. His marking worked. The odor of cat pee is daunting to the average nose-owning human, and no one could sit there for longer than a minute or two before hightailing it out of the chair. My husband wanted to dump the chair after smelling the ablutions of Milo’s love, but I revolted. It was too good a chair, and I had by now too many memories associated with it. Meredith read to Peter snuggled up in that chair, Michael’s birth announcement photo had been shot there, and the chair had been George’s favorite nursing spot. Peter used it as a prop in his one-act plays involving kings and queens. Although it smelled, it was still regal.
    I placed the chair in the farthest corner of the house and sprayed it daily with a magical elixir that managed to dull the odor to only mildly repulsive. The spray also worked to repel all future dousing by Milo. He never sat in or marked the chair again. Over the years the odor faded, and by now the chair had no real odor, only an occasional disagreeable whiff. It was still very sturdy and even more comfortable. The purple chair would be my dedicated reading chair.
    I was ready—ready to sit down in my purple chair and read. For years, books had offered to me a window into how other people deal with life, its sorrows and joys and monotonies and frustrations. I would look there again for empathy, guidance, fellowship, and experience. Books would give me all that, and more. After three years of carrying the truth of my sister’s death around with me, I knew I would never be relieved of my sorrow. I was not hoping for relief. I was hoping for answers. I was trusting in books to answer the relentless question of why I deserved to live. And of how I should live. My year of reading would be my escape back into life.

Chapter 3
Such Beauty in the World
    Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there is a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same . . . an always within never.
    MURIEL BARBERY,
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    I STARTED READING THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG BY Muriel Barbery on the train ride into New York City on the day of my forty-sixth birthday. The day had started with breakfast served up alongside kisses and hugs, envelopes and homemade cards waiting to the side. There was the usual card from my son Michael with its accurately numbered candles on the cake, each drawn in with its own flame. This was a cake to be wary of: so many candles, so much fire. There was a card from the cats, signed “from the cats” by Jack. We’ve always had cats but Jack never knows their names.
    I opened the envelopes that had come in through the mail over the last few days. There was a card from my parents and one from Jack’s parents, with the yearly cash enclosed. With fifty-plus children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and daughters- and sons-in-law, Jack’s parents could go broke with birthday-card cash, but until they did, the gift was always there.
    There was a final pile of cards for me to read, the slew of Hallmark mush that my husband is a sucker for and that I have come to look forward to. Tears and smiles along with our peanut-butter toast and coffee. I was grateful to be loved. I knew that most days I took the love for granted, just like I had taken life for granted, and this day I wanted to be different. I would begin my year of reading with gratitude. Gratitude for having all these lives and this love around me. Gratitude for living on into my forty-sixth