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Show 91 toddler arranging his toy locomotives in precise and exacting rows across the floor, though Evan and Luel had steered theirs with much greater abandon; she sees Evan's ambivalence and hesitations, from his early childhood, when he had rarely finished drawings because he could never f u l l y decide what to do, until his f u l l adulthood, when he had refused to take any sort of permanent job, but moved from one to another, every several years, in part because the newness of each interested him more than the success which might be gained from staying at one, but in part too because of his central undecidedness, a kind of gentle lack of committment to the world as a whole. Then there was Luel too, whose impetuous indiscretions had produced t h i s single, s o l i t a r y c h i l d , but whose s p i r i t had been stronger, wilder, more wonderful than any parent could hope for, and always sought to rise beyond her mild beginnings. Dear children, Annis thinks, as she surveys the cookery in her kitchen, no one of them perfect, all of them loved. Hers had not been a complex or outwardly exciting l i f e , but it had been one of great, secret contentment, a contentment she could feel most strongly now. Of course there had been hard places in this l i f e , Luel's death, f i r s t , and other troubles, and now these l i t t l e harshnesses with Rod and Evan and her husband John in the last few weeks, but somehow that is of no moment any more, not here at the end... But she sees suddenly that in all the wonderful chaos of this final meal, she has forgotten to buy a lemon. One lemon. One small simple thing, for which perhaps a few drops of vinegar would do, but then, she thinks, no substitute w i l l really do, not at the l a s t. " I ' l l just pop over to the store and get one," she says, swinging her coat around her. |
