Mrs. Bridge (Mr. Bridge & Mrs. Bridge, #1)

by Evan S. Connell

He was hostile to guest towels. She knew this, but, because guest towels were no concern of his, there had never been any direct conflict over them. She had a supply of Margab, which were the best, at least in the opinion of everyone she knew, and whenever guests were coming to the house she would put the ordinary towels in the laundry and place several of these little pastel towels in each of the bathrooms. They were quite small, not much larger than a handkerchief, and no one ever touched them. After the visitors had gone home she would carefully lift them from the rack and replace them in the box till next time. Nobody touched them because they looked too nice; guests always did as she herself did in their homes—she would dry her hands on a piece of Kleenex.

During the course of the holidays Mrs. Bridge would drive the children around to see how other houses were decorated, and on one of these trips they came to a stucco bungalow with a life-size cutout of Santa Claus on the roof, six reindeer in the front yard, candles in every window, and by the front door an enormous cardboard birthday cake with one candle. On the cake was this message: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR JESUS. “My word, how extreme,” said Mrs. Bridge thoughtfully. “Some Italians must live there.”

She spent a great deal of time staring into space, oppressed by the sense that she was waiting. But waiting for what? She did not know.

Yet each day proceeded like the one before. Nothing intense, nothing desperate, ever happened. Time did not move. The home, the city, the nation, and life itself were eternal; still she had a foreboding that one day, without warning and without pity, all the dear, important things would be destroyed.

She did not feel ill, but she had no confidence in her life. Why should her heart keep beating? What was there to live

Could she explain how the leisure of her life—that exquisite idleness he had created by giving her everything—was driving her insane?

Over the wisdom of Montaigne she brooded, eventually reaching the conclusion that if super-celestial ideas were necessarily accompanied by subterranean behavior it might be better to forego them both.