The Theoretical Foot. M. F. K. Fisher

      “Nobody.”

      “Well?”

      “Well, it’s simply different for a man. A man can drink more. He can drink younger.”

      “Oh no,” she said. “Not gin.”

      “Yes,” he said. “Anything.”

      “No,” she said. “Gin’s for women. It’s very good for the misery, for one thing.”

      “Have you got the misery, then?” her brother asked.

      “Not right now,” she said. “But I might get it and . . .”

      Their voices, intertwining, went on quietly, each with its own undercurrent of mirth. It was as if they were saying something quite different but putting it into ordinary if somewhat oddly-sorted-out words, so as not to startle those around them.

      I wish I had a brother who’d speak to me that way, Sue thought. A brother might be so comforting.

      Sue blinked as she stepped out at the top of the stairs into the white airy brightness of the little kitchen. They were all apparently seized by the same violent briskness as soon as they came within range of Sara, who stood putting glasses on a pewter tray that was already piled with silver and plates. Without stopping her work Sara began to speak to them and her tone sounded almost cross.

      “About time! Dan, bring up some beer, will you? And Nor, you take that tray out and fix a table on the terrace, please. Susan will help you. And Tim, will you please go up and tell Nan, for God’s sake, to stop writing and come down here. Lucy, too, of course.”

      Sara scowled at the tray, then muttered, “Napkins,” then looked up quickly and cried sharply, “Oh wait, Tim, here’s Nan!”

      There was a light soft sound of someone running across the living room and taking the pantry steps in one stride. Sue held her breath, thinking, What next? Who might this be? She was almost dizzy now with excitement and aspirin and gin and the beer she had at the casino.

      She gave one look at the small figure that seemed to fly into the pantry and pose there, then felt everyone look at her as she gasped. “Oh! You’re Anne Garton Temple!”

      Her cheeks were enflamed. She felt herself gaping, looking—she knew—like a moonstruck monkey, but she simply wasn’t able to stop it. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of staring at the newcomer, Sue turned to Joe and asked reproachfully, “You didn’t tell me?”

      Then everybody laughed and Joe said, “Hell, Sue, I thought everybody knew Anne Garton Temple was Tim’s sister. And I hadn’t realized,” he said, now grinning at Nan, “that we’d finally be meeting you.”

      Nan blushed and nodded and Tim walked quickly over and put an arm about her fragile shoulders.

      “People usually say it the other way around,” Tim said. “That I’m Nan’s brother rather than she’s my sister.” He looked—quite without malice—into her upturned face.

      They were the two loveliest people in the world, Sue decided, but the loveliest. She stood numbly as the introductions were made, then followed Honor out onto the long sunny terrace, Sue’s mind still thrilled with the vision of the tiny fair-haired woman with Tim’s arm lovingly around her.

      How can anyone that famous be so little? Sue thought. Why she’s hardly bigger than I am. And she looks so young, as young as the pictures on her books. But she can’t be, Sue argued. I got my first book of her poems just as I’d finished Shelley, that was at least six years ago and I know she’s in all the anthologies of modernist poets at school. She had to be forty, more. But she can’t be, she looks no older than Sara. Oh dear, I wonder if I’ll have done anything to be so famous by the time I’ve lived that long?

      She sighed, rubbed her forehead. She now felt suddenly very tired and so sleepy she could hardly move. Her eyes hurt when she looked toward the wide and glittering lake that lay almost at their feet, yet also far, far below. Beyond the lake the hard black bulk of the mountains on the other shore felt almost like a physical blow.

      How could she act in a way that made her seem so light and silly with all this sound around her and such a bad cold in her head?

      “I really had no idea,” she protested. Her own voice was now so husky it startled her.

      “You mean about Nan?”

      “Yes, that she was—that she is—what she is. I never thought I’d meet her. I have all her books. And plays! When I was in Chicago a year ago I saw Hunter, No More! four times. I thought it was wonderful!”

      “Yes,” Honor allowed. “She’s swell. Maybe not quite Shakespeare but . . .?”

      “Oh, some of those early sonnets, and anyway, no one’s Shakespeare except Shakespeare. And what other woman has ever written a play in verse that has run for weeks and months all over the world?”

      “Okay, sure,” Honor laughed. “I’m just as enthusiastic as you are and wait until you get to know her. But . . .?” She looked hard at Sue, who stood leaning heavily against the table.

      Sue was frowning under her thick dark brows, remembering those sonnets, those fine ringing lines.

      “But, Sue,” Honor continued. “You look like you have a fever. How do you feel? Did you find those hankies?”

      Sue nodded. She was still overwhelmed with bewildered awe that she was in the same house as was Anne Garton Temple. She shook her head, trying then to answer Honor’s question.

      “No, really, I feel quite all right, thanks,” Sue said, but then she sniffed.

      “Yes?” Honor asked, still examining her quizzically.

      “Yes, really. It’s just that I forgot to eat any breakfast and now I’m in sort of a blur, with it’s all being so queer and exciting and . . .”

      “Oh, HELL-OH-oh!”

      The girls looked up. On the balcony that stretched across half the length of the long house, a woman leaned over who was now waving at them. She had a nice smile and Sue smiled back at the woman, who had thick light-brown hair that was piled messily into a tousle at the back of her head. This was a big woman, from what Sue could see, with heavy breasts and broad shoulders.

      This can’t be the one who thinks I’m bad, Sue thought. She seems so friendly, so kind.

      “Oh, hello, Lucy,” Honor called up to her, with more easy geniality than Sue expected of her. “Lucy, this is our friend Susan Harper. Sue, Mrs. Pendleton.”

      “You poor child! Don’t stand there breaking your neck looking up at me, but then I would stand in the most uncomfortable place for everyone!”

      Lucy Pendleton spoke so warmly, her mouth was wide, her eyes bright blue, and she seemed to smile with her entire face. “Isn’t it time for lunch?” she asked. “I’ve had such an absorbing morning but I’ll be right down and try to do something useful,” she said, then disappeared.

      Sue looked at Honor, lifting her dark brows inquiringly. Honor was busy pushing deck chairs and arranging them around the table.

      “She’s a painter,” Honor explained. “Watercolors. Friend of Nan’s. Pick a comfortable chair, Sue, and sit right down. Everything will be out in a moment. You really look like you could do with a little nourishment.”

      Sue, after a moment of internal protest, did then sink gratefully into a chair. It felt so good to be sitting down. This was the first time she could remember being seated since, what? Was it two weeks ago on the train they’d taken to Munich? The thought of eating, though, made her feel a little queasy. She let her head lie back against the striped canvas back of the chair, pulling her feet up under her to sit on them, as she had as a child.

      Honor now strode across to the gratings in front of the living room windows and called down, “Hey!”