The Living is Easy. Dorothy West
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Living is Easy |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Dorothy West |
| Жанр | История |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | История |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9781558617322 |
To Ike
Published in 1982 by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406, New York, NY 10016 feministpress.org
Copyright © 1948, 1975 by Dorothy West
Afterword © 1982 by the Feminist Press at CUNY
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
The characters in this novel are fictitious; any resemblance to actual persons is wholly accidental and unintentional.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
West, Dorothy, 1907–1998
The living is easy.
Reprint. Originally published: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1948.
Includes bibliographical references.
I. Title.
[PS3545.E82794L5 . 1982] 813'.54 81-22062
eISBN 9781558617322
This publication is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts
CONTENTS
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part Two
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Afterword
About the Author
Also Available from the Feminist Press
The Living Is Easy
“WALK UP,” hissed Cleo, somewhat fiercely.
Judy was five, and her legs were fat, but she got up steam and propelled her small stout body along like a tired scow straining in the wake of a racing sloop. She peeped at her mother from under the expansive brim of her leghorn straw. She knew what Cleo would look like. Cleo looked mad.
Cleo swished down the spit-spattered street with her head in the air and her sailor aslant her pompadour. Her French heels rapped the sidewalk smartly, and her starched skirt swayed briskly from her slender buttocks. Through the thin stuff of her shirtwaist her golden shoulders gleamed, and were tied to the rest of her torso with the immaculate straps of her camisole, chemise, and summer shirt, which were banded together with tiny gold-plated safety pins. One gloved hand gave ballast to Judy, the other gripped her pocketbook.
This large patent-leather pouch held her secret life with her sisters. In it were their letters of obligation, acknowledging her latest distribution of money and clothing and prodigal advice. The instruments of the concrete side of her charity, which instruments never left the inviolate privacy of her purse, were her credit books, showing various aliases and unfinished payments, and her pawnshop tickets, the expiration dates of which had mostly come and gone, constraining her to tell her husband, with no intent of irony, that another of her diamonds had gone down the drain.
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