The Chateau by William Maxwell

a friend of his father.
    What did he do, where was he, during the war?
    He wasn’t in the war … 4F. He has to be away from Barbara, traveling, several times a year, but the rest of the time he can be home, where he wants to be. His hours are long, but he has already had two raises, and now this four months’ leave of absence, proof that his work is valued.
    And who is she? whom did he marry?
    Somebody who matches him, the curves and hollows of her nature fitting into all the curves and hollows of his nature as, in bed, her straight back and soft thighs fit inside the curve of hisbreast and belly and hips and bent legs. Somebody who looks enough like him that they are mistaken occasionally for brother and sister, and who keeps him warm at night, taking the place of the doll that he used to sleep with his arm around: Barbara Scully. Barbara S. Rhodes, when she writes a check.
    And what was her childhood like?
    Well, where to begin is again the question. At the seashore? Or should we take up, one after another, the dogs, the nursemaids? Or the time she broke her arm? She was seven when that happened. Or the period when she cared about nothing but horses? Or that brief, heartbreaking, first falling in love? Or the piles of clothes on the bed, on the chairs in her room, all with name tapes sewed on them, and the suitcases waiting to be filled?
    Or should we open that old exercise book that by some accident has survived? “One day our mother gave the children a party.
    There were fourteen merry girls and boys at the party.
    They played games and raced about the lawn with Rover.
    But John fell from a tree and broke his arm.
    Mother sent a boy to bring the doctor.
    The doctor set the arm and said that it would soon be better.
    Was not John a brave boy to bear the pain as he did.”
    Three times 269 is not 627, of course; and neither does 854 minus 536 equal 316. But it is true that there are seven days in the week, and that all the children must learn their lessons. Also that it is never the raveled sleeve of just one day’s care that sleep knits up. She should have been at home nursing her baby, and instead here they both are in Europe. And every month contains doomed days, such sad sighs, the rain that does not rain, and blood that is the color of bitter disappointment when it finally flows. This is the lesson she is now learning.
    The shadow that showed up in the crystal ball?
    Right. And all the years he was growing up, he would have liked to be somebody else—an athlete, broad-shouldered, blond, unworried, and popular. Even now he avoids his reflection inmirrors and wants to be liked by everybody. Not loved; just liked. On meeting someone who interests him he goes toward that person unhesitatingly, as if this were the one moment they would ever have together, their one chance of knowing each other. He is curious and at the same time he is tactful. He lets the other person know, by the way he listens, by the sympathetic look in his brown eyes, that he wants to know everything; and at the same time the other person has the reassuring suspicion that Harold Rhodes will not ask questions it would be embarrassing to have to answer. He tries to attach people to him, not so that he can use them or so that they will add to his importance but only because he wants them to be a part of his life. The landscape must have figures in it. And it never seems to occur to him that there is a limit to the number of close friendships anyone can decently and faithfully accommodate.
    If wherever you go you are always looking for eyes that meet your eyes, hands that do not avoid touching or being touched by you, then you must have more than two eyes and two hands; you must be a kind of monster. If, on meeting someone who interests you, you go toward them unhesitatingly as if this is the only moment you will ever have for knowing each other, then you must learn to deal with second meetings that aren’t always