Free The Hours by Michael Cunningham Page B

them to make a career out of assisting at the press. Leonard may be autocratic, he may be unfair, but he is her companion and caretaker, and she will not betray him, certainly not for handsome, callow Ralph, or Marjorie, with her parakeet’s voice.
    ‘‘There are ten errors in eight pages,’’ Leonard says. The brackets around his mouth are so deep you could slip a penny in.
    ‘‘Lucky to have found them,’’ Virginia says.
    ‘‘They seem to congregate around the middle section. Do you think bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of misfortune?’’
    ‘‘How I’d love to live in a world in which that were true. I’m going for a walk to clear my head, then I’ll come and pitch in.’’
    ‘‘We’re making good progress,’’ Ralph says. ‘‘We should be through by the end of the day.’’
    ‘‘We shall be lucky,’’ Leonard says, ‘‘to be through by this time next week.’’
    He glowers; Ralph turns a finer and more precise shade of red. Of course, she thinks. Ralph set the type, and did it carelessly. The truth, she thinks, sits calmly and plumply, dressed in matronly gray, between these two men. It does not reside with Ralph, the young foot soldier, who appreciates literature but appreciates also, with equal or perhaps greater fervor, the
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    brand y and biscuits waiting when the day’s work is done; who is good-hearted and unexceptional and can barely be counted on to perpetuate, in his allotted span, the ordinary business of the ordinary world. The truth likewise does not (alas) reside with Leonard, brilliant and indefatigable Leonard, who refuses to distinguish between setback and catastrophe; who worships accomplishment above all else and makes himself unbearable to others because he genuinely believes he can root out and reform every incidence of human fecklessness and mediocrity.
    ‘‘I’m sure,’’ she says, ‘‘that between us we can get the book into some sort of acceptable shape, and still have Christmas.’’
    Ralph grins at her with a relief so visible she has an urge to slap him. He overestimates her sympathy—she has spoken not on his behalf but on Leonard’s, in much the way her own mother might have made light of a servant’s blunder during dinner, declaring for the sake of her husband and all others present that the shattered tureen portended nothing; that the circle of love and forbearance could not be broken; that all were safe.
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    M r s. Brown
    L ife , London, this moment of June.
    She begins sifting flour into a blue bowl. Outside the window is the brief interlude of grass that separates this house from the neighbors’; the shadow of a bird streaks across the blinding white stucco of the neighbors’ garage. Laura is briefly, deeply pleased by the shadow of the bird, the bands of brilliant white and green. The bowl on the counter before her is a pale, chalky, slightly faded blue with a thin band of white leaves at the rim. The leaves are identical, stylized, slightly cartoonish, canted at rakish angles, and it seems perfect and inevitable that one of them has suffered a small, precisely triangular nick in its side. A fine white rain of flour falls into the bowl.
    ‘‘There we are,’’ she says to Richie. ‘‘Do you want to see?’’
    ‘‘Yes,’’ he answers.
    She kneels to show him the sifted flour. ‘‘Now. We have to
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    measur e out four cups. Oh, my. Do you know how many four
    is?’’
    He holds up four fingers. ‘‘Good,’’ she says. ‘‘Very good.’’
    At this moment she could devour him, not ravenously but adoringly, infinitely gently, the way she used to take the Host into her mouth before she married and converted (her mother will never forgive her, never). She is full of a love so strong, so unambiguous, it resembles appetite.
    ‘‘You’re such a good, smart boy,’’ she says.
    Richie grins; he looks ardently into her face. She looks back at him. They pause, motionless, watching each other, and for