Dale Loves Sophie to Death by Robb Forman Dew Page B

parties, but their summers went like this: People arrived in the morning or after lunch on some days and didn’t leave until late evening. If Vic was at work on his own writing, or if he was going over material for the
Review,
the company might not see him at all. He would have settled himself into the big upstairs bedroom for the day, only appearing now and then to make a sandwich or get some coffee. If this was the case, the visitors would register their arrivals and departures with Ellen, who moved around the downstairs rooms to attend to many and various small tasks. Sometimes she would sit at her desk in one corner of the dining room and work at her poetry, and then people came and went without disturbing her. The wide front door, mortised in a traditional double-cross pattern, stood open. The central hall was illuminated on sunny days, or if the sky flew with clouds, it was as though the shining wood floor was darkening and lightening of its own accord. The guests arrived dressed to swim, or they changed unabashedly in the long grass at the edge of the pond. Some simply took off what they had on and waded in. It was established that no visitor judged any other as to their apparel.
    Some of the company were friends who just came out to enjoy the pond, and others were carpenters or plumbers or rural neighbors who stopped by on farmers’ errands. People brought gifts. They brought cakes, tomatoes, cut flowers, books.
    Martin had a niche in that house into which he settled customarily, and of which he was the sole occupant. He and Vic could consult each other if need be, but otherwise they could weed in peace through the unsolicited manuscripts sent in to the
Review
. They could work well in the tranquillity of a busy house that nevertheless functions methodically. The two of them could work with the assurance that other things were being taken care of.
    Ellen was their protection. She had almost made Martin believe in the feasibility of living a life that was only immediate. One night, as they sat watching the news in the Hofstatters’ small sitting room off the kitchen, they had suddenly been confronted with the plight of the Vietnamese boat people set afloat precariously on dozens of swaying, tottering ships. The people were packed so tightly aboard that they could only stand, and they looked out at the camera with apparent apathy. In that instant Martin was overawed by sorrow. His instinct was to cover his ears and close his eyes, although he only sat there looking, filled with hopelessness, and then also affected with fear for his own children, who would be, who must be, eventually, threatened by the world’s condition. But Ellen rose from the floor where she had been sitting and turned off the set. She sat back down to the crocheting she was doing, and her features were so bleakly determined in her anger that Vic was surprised into alarm. “Ellen…” he began, and Martin, too, thought that she was so saddened that she couldn’t bear it.
    But, in fact, he hadn’t understood. “It’s an obscenity,” she said, “to have that on the air. What can we
do
about it? Why do we need even to know about it? For God’s sake, why do they tell us?”
    Anyone could have answered her, and might have if she had not been so angry—and her anger was at the people themselves, all those people crowded on board those bath-tublike boats. Martin was shocked; he saw that her empathy was so far away, so isolated from any external influence that she would not be touched. From that moment he would regard her more warily, and yet she had given him a peculiar comfort. She managed to sanction a life lived within the bounds one delineates for it. In some way Martin was absolved of responsibility by her attitude, and yet his affection for her was subtly diminished.
    But it was Ellen’s determination to live her life within her own house that made Martin’s summer a respite from normal cares, and made it a time in which he could do work