Galilee Read Free

St. Thomas Aquinas in my lap and watch life in the mimosas?
    There are two reasons. The first is my half-sister Marietta.
    It happened like this. About two weeks ago she came into my room (without knocking, as usual), partook of a glass of gin, without asking, as usual, and sitting down without invitation in what used to be my father’s chair said: “Eddie . . .”
    She knows I hate to be called Eddie. My full name’s Edmund Maddox Barbarossa. Edmund is fine; Maddox is fine; I was even called The Ox in my younger day, and didn’t find it offensive. But Eddie? An Eddie can walk. An Eddie can make love. I’m no Eddie.
    â€œWhy do you always do that?” I asked her.
    She sat back in the creaking chair and smiled mischievously, “Because it annoys you,” she replied. A typically Mariettaesque response, I may say. She can be the very soul of perversity, though to look at her you’d never think it. I won’t dote on her here (she gets far too much of that from her girlfriends), but she is a beautiful woman, by any measure. When she smiles, it’s my father’s smile; the sheer appetite in it, that’s an echo of him. In repose, she’s Cesaria’s daughter; lazy-lidded and full of quiet certitude, her gaze, if it rests on you for more than a moment, like a physical thing. She’s not a tall creature, my Marietta—a little over five feet without her boots—and now the immensity of chair she was sitting in, and the silly-sweet smile on her face, diminished her almost to a child. It wasn’t hard to imagine my father behind her, his huge arms wrapped around her, rocking her. Perhaps she imagined it too, sitting there. Perhaps
it was that memory that made her say:
    â€œDo you feel sad these days? I mean, especially sad?”
    â€œWhat do you mean: especially sad?”
    â€œWell I know how you brood in here—”
    â€œI don’t brood.”
    â€œYou shut yourself away.”
    â€œIt’s by choice. I’m not unhappy.”
    â€œHonestly?”
    â€œI’ve got all I need here. My books. My music. Even if I’m desperate, I’ve got a television. I even know how to switch it on.”
    â€œSo you don’t feel sad? Ever?”
    As she was pressing me so hard on the subject, I gave it a few more moments of thought. “Actually, I suppose I have had one or two bouts of melancholy recently,” I conceded. “Nothing I couldn’t shake off, but—”
    â€œI hate this gin.”
    â€œIt’s English.”
    â€œIt’s bitter. Why do you have to have English gin? The sun went down on the Empire a long time ago.”
    â€œI like the bitterness.”
    She pulled a face. “Next time I’m in Charleston I’m going to bring you some really nice brandy,” she said.
    â€œBrandy’s overrated,” I remarked.
    â€œIt’s good if you dissolve a little cocaine in it. Have you ever tried that? That gives it a nice kick.”
    â€œCocaine dissolved in brandy?”
    â€œIt goes down so smoothly, and you don’t get a nose filled with gray boogers the next morning.”
    â€œI don’t have any need for cocaine, Marietta. I get along quite well with my gin.”
    â€œBut liquor makes you sleepy.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo you won’t be able to afford so much sleepiness, once you get to work.”
    â€œAm I missing something here?” I asked her.
    She got up, and despite her contempt for my English gin, refilled her glass and came to stand behind my chair. “May I wheel you out onto the balcony?”
    â€œI wish you’d get to the point.”
    â€œI thought you Englishmen liked prevarication?” she said, easing me out from in front of my desk and taking me around it to the French windows. They were already wide open—I’d been sitting enjoying the fragrance of the evening air when Marietta entered. She took me out onto the