A Solitary Blue: Chapters 10–12

Sometimes he caught himself protesting to himself: life is too rich. Like one of the French meals Brother Thomas cooked for them, where when you concentrated on the taste of chicken you knew you were missing out on the sharp, winy sauce and the sweetness of onions or mushrooms sauteed so briskly that their musty flavor got locked inside each slice.

He had known she needed to be left alone, just as he had known that Sammy needed to be wrestled with, hard, during that long time of grieving, that James’s absorbed interest in entomology came from the same source, and that Maybeth was all right, stronger, somehow, for this than any of the others.

He knew she wasn’t perfect—she was often bossy, and she always knew what she wanted, so she was impatient with anyone less decisive.

She was harsh, sometimes; too quick to judge, especially people who didn’t work the same way she did. He knew that. But he didn’t want her to be imperfect in that one particular way. And if she was (and James would know) Jeff didn’t feel necessarily safe with her alone.

She paid attention only to the boat, to the tiller and to the wind in the sails.

The hardest thing, all the time, was trying to remember all the different ends you had to cover and let it slip out in conversation, not as if you were making it up. And trying to look casual, too, because if these guys had figured out that we really needed help they wouldn’t have offered it.

Something was wrong, he knew that, and he realized that this same barren feeling he was getting from Brother Thomas now was the only kind of feeling he’d gotten from the man this visit.

Bleak, Jeff felt, bleak and hopeless, some inner landscape as barren as the moon’s surface, cold and lifeless.

“We’ve got tongs,” James told him. “Gram used them when she was a little girl. Her uncle made them. They're wooden. He was a bootlegger.”

We had the hearing, uncontested. I should get the decree next week, then there’s a thirty-day period during which she can appeal.

They think I’m an anachronism. Something of a lost soul. A funny old man.

“She could work me into a stupor without even straining her own resources.”

But the blue seemed not to find them threatening. It stared across the creek at them, then turned its back on them in a stately gesture of dismissal.

Dicey’s low voice told him to pull down the mainsail, and he did. When he had it gathered around the boom, he looked back to the bird.

Jeff wrapped the sheet around the loosely furled mainsail and went up to the bow to fend off.

Dicey concentrated on maneuvering the boat, propelled now only by its own weight.

Her hand rested on the tiller as she waited patiently for the sluggish hull to respond to her directions.

She looked like such a bedraggled, lonely little thing. I felt really sorry for her.

The Professor was looking from one to the other of them, back and forth, his head moving in a helpless and bewildered gesture.

This dusty old car pulled up, the kind you expect fusty middle-aged people to ride around in, you know?

She knows about pesticides and herbicides—she liked our tomatoes.

He was responsible for what he had done, and that responsibility buzzed around his head like birds—like sea gulls in a flock, squabbling in midflight about some morsel of food, trying to grab it from whichever bird had it, attacking each other so greedily that the food fell into the water.

He was responsible for what he had done, and that responsibility buzzed around his head like birds—like sea gulls in a flock, squabbling in midflight about some morsel of food, trying to grab it from whichever bird had it, attacking each other so greedily that the food fell into the water.

So he kept himself aloof, inside himself.

I’m thinking about marine biology—with some chemistry and some economics, because it’s never going to be a simple problem—and computers too, because that’s the only efficient way to collate material, so you have to know programming, I guess.

He wants to put in a vegetable garden. I think he’s inspired by your Mrs. Tillerman.

He carried an attaché case.

This was surely, he said, the most secluded spot he’d ever seen, but then he guessed writers naturally hankered after seclusion.

“Your great-grandmother was a fine lady, very old-fashioned in many ways, which I for one find a rare virtue these days. A rare virtue.”

I’ve administered her property for a number of years. I think you might say I’m more intimately aware of the structure of the estate than anybody else.

That’s by way of introduction. Preamble you might say.

The estate consists of personal property (jewelry and household effects), the one piece of real estate, as well as some stocks.

The investments represent only about fifty thousand dollars in capital.

Fortunately, she had purchased annuities for them, several years ago, so they will move into a nursing home together.

Whatever real legacy there is will come from the personal possessions.

I’ve had it appraised so there should be no difficulty about giving it over to you now.

I’m not, Dr. Greene, the lawyer who handled the divorce. So we can work together without being hindered by whatever has gone on in the past.

“There were only the four specific bequests, that ring to you, the items to your mother, the furniture to the two elderly women. The rest comes to you as single heir.”

Miss Opal shouldn’t be left with no pension, not after all those years of work.

At the end, they invited Mr. Jacobs to stay for dinner, but he declined.