It was a very touch-and-go business, in 1955, to get a wholly plausible reading from Mrs. Glass's face, and especially from her enormous blue eyes. Where once, a few years earlier, her eyes alone could break the news (either to people or to bathmats) that two of her sons were dead, one by suicide (her favorite, her most intricately calibrated, her kindest son), and one killed in World War II (her only truly lighthearted son)-- where once Bessie Glass's eyes alone could report these facts, with an eloquence and a seeming passion for detail that neither her husband nor any of her adult surviving children could bear to look at, let alone take in, now, in 1955, she was apt to use this same terrible Celtic equipment to break the news, usually at the front door, that the new delivery boy hadn't brought the leg of lamb in time for dinner or that some remote Hollywood starlet's marriage was on the rocks.
There's a certain kind of world-weary sadness where everything hits you hard.
Wow! Thanks for this! I've been curious about and had this on my TBR for a while now but this definitely bumps it up in the list!
ReplyDelete... I consider what I would experience if anything tragic struck my daughters... I always envisioned those occurrences, which, thankfully, have not occured, being like this, a heavy weight that in its enormity, simply wears me down to the point that everyday disappointments carry the same heaviness as the tragedy itself...
ReplyDelete