Read Wickett's Remedy for Free Online Page A
Authors: Myla Goldberg
he had also learned a few lessons at Scollay.
To Henry the terms seemed neither religions nor didactic. To his mind, nothing rendered the body more beautiful than Latin.
Under the command of her old heart, Lydia would have known whom to approach with questions of conjugation, but her new station in life left her stymied. She feared her mother’s acceptance of her non-Catholic son-in-law was too fragile to support queries on suchan intimate topic, and she could not imagine asking her father or brother. She supposed she could have sought counsel among her married girlfriends, but even between her and Margaret Kelly—who had once run three blocks to announce to Lydia the arrival of her first monthlies—there had grown an undercurrent of reserve that now confined them to discussions of fashion, movies, and the price of ground hamburger. Lacking an alternative, Lydia resigned herself to the notion that diligent repetition would allow her and Henry to improve on their own.
They had not been married long before she learned that, Latin vocabulary aside, her husband’s enthusiasm for his medical studies was limited. On evenings following surgeries or dissections Henry would leave his dinner untouched and retire to bed early, complaining of headache. Even on days in which he avoided the operating theater he complained of dull classes and overdemanding instructors. Far more interesting to him was the news from Europe. Henry’s journalistic aspirations had been stanched by his mother, who did not think newspapers a proper occupation for a Wickett, and so he had made his passion an avocation instead. When not decrying the latest development in European affairs, he was attacking the newsprint itself with a pen, reworking sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs he found lacking in flair, and then sharing with his wife the results of his labors. While Lydia enjoyed a newspaper as much as the next person, she did not see why Henry should take such pains to rewrite something that had already been printed. Nor did she share her husband’s passion for news from somewhere so distant as Austro-Hungary: she had certainly neverheard of the Archduke Ferdinand before he was shot. She looked forward to the end of Henry’s medical studies. Once he was a doctor they would be freed from Mr. and Mrs. Wickett’s purse strings and he could focus on an aspect of medicine that he liked, perhaps one that did not involve too much blood.
Franz Ferdinand is far more popular among Us than he was in Sarajevo: his memories of his wife, Sophie, remain delectably keen. For this We are thankful. On average, erotic memory possesses a woefully short half-life.
In Southie, Lydia would have thought nothing of taking a break from housework to visit a neighbor’s kitchen for tea and conversation, but the Somerset did not offer that comfort. Though she supposed somewhere within the Somerset lurked another young married couple, the building had not yet yielded such a treasure. Short of wandering the halls and crouching before closed doors with her ears perked for sounds of another young wife, Lydia reasoned she would just have to wait until she met such a person by chance—in the lobby, perhaps, or in the stairwell. In the meantime she did her best to banish the small troubles that dogged her thoughts through the long afternoons. When the silence of the empty flat grew oppressive, she reminded herself that in a year such quiet would likely seem precious. She hoped they would have a girl first: though Michael had been of some use, Mrs. Kilkenny often exclaimed that she did not know how she would have managed her brood without a daughter. As Lydia dusted and swept, ironed and folded, she shuffled her features with her husband’s to create a girl with her light freckles and Henry’s long fingers, and a boy with Henry’s green eyes and her upturned mouth.
She was thus engaged one afternoon when Henry burst into the flat with such exuberance that she thought the
To Henry the terms seemed neither religions nor didactic. To his mind, nothing rendered the body more beautiful than Latin.
Under the command of her old heart, Lydia would have known whom to approach with questions of conjugation, but her new station in life left her stymied. She feared her mother’s acceptance of her non-Catholic son-in-law was too fragile to support queries on suchan intimate topic, and she could not imagine asking her father or brother. She supposed she could have sought counsel among her married girlfriends, but even between her and Margaret Kelly—who had once run three blocks to announce to Lydia the arrival of her first monthlies—there had grown an undercurrent of reserve that now confined them to discussions of fashion, movies, and the price of ground hamburger. Lacking an alternative, Lydia resigned herself to the notion that diligent repetition would allow her and Henry to improve on their own.
They had not been married long before she learned that, Latin vocabulary aside, her husband’s enthusiasm for his medical studies was limited. On evenings following surgeries or dissections Henry would leave his dinner untouched and retire to bed early, complaining of headache. Even on days in which he avoided the operating theater he complained of dull classes and overdemanding instructors. Far more interesting to him was the news from Europe. Henry’s journalistic aspirations had been stanched by his mother, who did not think newspapers a proper occupation for a Wickett, and so he had made his passion an avocation instead. When not decrying the latest development in European affairs, he was attacking the newsprint itself with a pen, reworking sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs he found lacking in flair, and then sharing with his wife the results of his labors. While Lydia enjoyed a newspaper as much as the next person, she did not see why Henry should take such pains to rewrite something that had already been printed. Nor did she share her husband’s passion for news from somewhere so distant as Austro-Hungary: she had certainly neverheard of the Archduke Ferdinand before he was shot. She looked forward to the end of Henry’s medical studies. Once he was a doctor they would be freed from Mr. and Mrs. Wickett’s purse strings and he could focus on an aspect of medicine that he liked, perhaps one that did not involve too much blood.
Franz Ferdinand is far more popular among Us than he was in Sarajevo: his memories of his wife, Sophie, remain delectably keen. For this We are thankful. On average, erotic memory possesses a woefully short half-life.
In Southie, Lydia would have thought nothing of taking a break from housework to visit a neighbor’s kitchen for tea and conversation, but the Somerset did not offer that comfort. Though she supposed somewhere within the Somerset lurked another young married couple, the building had not yet yielded such a treasure. Short of wandering the halls and crouching before closed doors with her ears perked for sounds of another young wife, Lydia reasoned she would just have to wait until she met such a person by chance—in the lobby, perhaps, or in the stairwell. In the meantime she did her best to banish the small troubles that dogged her thoughts through the long afternoons. When the silence of the empty flat grew oppressive, she reminded herself that in a year such quiet would likely seem precious. She hoped they would have a girl first: though Michael had been of some use, Mrs. Kilkenny often exclaimed that she did not know how she would have managed her brood without a daughter. As Lydia dusted and swept, ironed and folded, she shuffled her features with her husband’s to create a girl with her light freckles and Henry’s long fingers, and a boy with Henry’s green eyes and her upturned mouth.
She was thus engaged one afternoon when Henry burst into the flat with such exuberance that she thought the