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Show house/ 399 The French doors were slightly open and through them floated the sounds of Brian splashing in the bathroom. I had been awake for hours, waiting, feeling heavy and too thoughtful. I shifted impatiently. I wanted to do something on this golden morning ~ walk in the neighboring foothills or drive through the resplendent canyons, or rake leaves, bending beneath the bright autumn sky with air stinging through my lungs. But the aprtment manager did the raking and even vacuumed the outdoor carpet on my balcony, as he did this Saturday morning even before I was out of bed. He had awakened me, tiptoing across the livingroom. I felt him pause and stare at the bedroom door. He believed that we were newlyweds. From the balcony I could see the blacktopped parking lot and the sparkling brick of the apartment building. I felt rather like I was riding in a sandbagged basket of a balloon which often smothered the city, gloating above the • smog A The foothills below me were checkered with neat cottages, clustering the state capitol building with its dome and church-like spire. Directly below the capitol, a statue of the Angel Moroni, son of Mormon who inscribed the Golden Plates, trumpeted captured sunlight from his pinnacle atop the Mormon temple. Westward stretched the Great Salt Lake - the New World's own dead sea - fed by our own Jordan River, a silver ribbon rumpling south. Because of autumn winds, the air was clean today, and clear enough to site the Salt Flats A a glistening edge on the horizon. From the balcony everything seemed orderly and beautiful: Promised Valley, City of Zion. But I knew that something was missing, something I could not find even in the textbooks that were stacked in the French provincial bookcase ii |