Mrs Bridge

by Evan S. Connell

Mr and Mrs Bridge were giving a party, not because they wanted to, but because it was time. Like dinner with the Van Metres, once you accepted an invitation you were obligated to reciprocate, or, as Mr Bridge had once expressed it, retaliate.

And when the moment finally came she pulled the lever recording her wish for the world to remain as it was.

Tarquin, having had a bellyful of psychology, or, perhaps, only feeling unusually progressive, had entered the bedroom of his parents while they were asleep and had shot them dead.

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

I have always observed a singular accord between super-celestial ideas and subterranean behavior.

some people go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain;

‘Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale – the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?’

She is a reflection of you and me, an exemplar of our shared humanity and all the terror and opportunity it so briefly provides – so necessary to seize, and so easy to squander.