He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there.
Richard YatesRachel became slowly aware now, even while talking and listening to her own voice, that there might well be something universal about the pleasure a grown girl could take in disparaging her mother.
Richard YatesRachel came carefully downstairs one morning, in a dressing gown that wasn't quite clean, and stood at the brink of the living room as though preparing to make an announcement. She looked around at each member of the double household - at Evan, who was soberly opening the morning paper, at Phil, who'd been home from Costello's for hours but hadn't felt like sleeping yet, and at her mother, who was setting the table for breakfast - and then she came out with it.
"I love everybody," she said, stepping into the room with an uncertain smile. And her declaration might have had the generally soothing effect she'd intended if her mother hadn't picked it up and exploited it for all the sentimental weight it would bear.
"Oh Rachel," she cried, "What a sweet, lovely thing to say!" and she turned to address Evan and Phil as if both of them might be too crass or numbskulled to appreciate it by themselves. "Isn't that a wonderful thing for this girl to say, on a perfectly ordinary Friday morning? Rachel, I think you've put us all to shame for our petty bickering and our selfish little silences, and it's something I'll never forget. You really do have a marvelous wife, Evan, and I have a marvelous daughter. Oh, and Rachel, you can be sure that everybody in this house loves you, too, and we're all tremendously glad to have you feeling so well."
Rachel's embarrassment was now so intense that it seemed almost to prevent her from taking her place at the table; she tried two quick, apologetic looks at her husband and her brother, but they both missed the message in her eyes.
And Gloria wasn't yet quite finished. "I honestly believe that was a moment we'll remember all our lives," she said. "Little Rachel coming downstairs - or little big Rachel, rather - and saying 'I love everybody.' You know what I wish though Evan? I only wish your father could've been here this morning to share it with us."
But by then even Gloria seemed to sense that the thing had been carried far enough. As soon as she'd stopped talking the four of them took their breakfast in a hunched and businesslike silence, until Phil mumbled "Excuse me" and shoved back his chair.
"Where do you think you're going, young man?" Gloria inquired. "I don't think you'd better go anywhere until you finish up all of that egg.
Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life, and looking back it always seemed that the trouble began with their parents’ divorce.
Richard YatesTags: life unhappiness opening-line
He could even be grateful in a sense that he had no particular area of interest: in avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.
Richard YatesHer voice had been the only sound in the room for ten minutes or more, and it had been continuous. She seemed keenly aware of this, but aware too that if she allowed herself to stop the house would fill with a silence as thick as water, an impossibly deep, wide pool in which she would flounder and drown.
Richard YatesOh-h-h-h— Hidey, tidey, Christ Almighty Who the hell are we? Flim, flam, God damn We’re the infantry…
Richard YatesIt had been easy to decide in favor of love on Bethune Street, in favor of walking proud and naked on the grass rug of an apartment that caught the morning sun among its makeshift chairs, its French travel posters and its bookcase made of packing-crate slats—an apartment where half the fun of having an affair was that it was just like being married, and where later, after a trip to City Hall and back, after a ceremonial collecting of the other two keys from the other two men, half the fun of being married was that it was just like having an affair. She’d decided in favor of that, all right.
Richard YatesIt’s the great sentimental lie of the suburbs, and I’ve been making you subscribe to it all this time.
Richard YatesOh, you’ll what? You’ll leave me? What’s that supposed to be—a threat or a promise?
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