Chapter 4 chapter 2

Babette was tall and plump, with a slightly thick waist and a little overweight.Her hair was a peculiar russet color formerly known as "dirty blond," pulled into a large unkempt bun.Had she been a little woman, such a hairstyle would have been too pretentious, naughty, and inventive.Her large stature lends a certain seriousness to her disheveled appearance.Big women don't calculate things like that.They lack the cunning to play tricks on their own bodies. "You really ought to go there," I told her. "where?" "Today is the day of the wagon party."

"Did I miss it again? You should remind me." "There were so many cars that they lined up past the music library and onto the interstate. Blues, greens, purples, browns, all glistening in the sun, like a desert wagon caravan." "You know I need a reminder, Jack." Shaggy-haired Babette has the casual gravitas of a great man who is so absorbed in the great cause that he doesn't know or care about his own appearance.That's not to say she's the gifted big-starter the world generally thinks she is.She keeps children close to her and cares for them, teaches a course in an adult education program, and joins a volunteer group that reads newspapers to the blind.She read once a week to an old man named Treadwell, who lived on the outskirts of town, and was called Old Man Treadwell, as if he were a landmark or a rock formation or a spooky swamp.She read to him The National Enquirer, The National Inspector, The National Express, The Globe, The Star.The old buddies demand a little cult mystery every week.Why reject him?The point of it all here is that no matter what Babette does, she always makes me feel sweetly rewarded, connected with a wholehearted woman, a lover of daylight, a life full of life, and a lively family atmosphere. Together.I have been watching her do things methodically, skillfully, and seemingly effortlessly, unlike my previous wives—they all had a tendency to distance themselves from the objective world, and their entanglements with intelligence agencies made them a A handful of self-absorbed, always-on-nervous characters.

"I didn't mean to see station wagons. What do they look like? Do the women wear plaid shirts and knit sweaters? Do the men wear riding jackets? What do riding jackets look like?" "They're rich and comfortable," I said. "They really believe they should have money and be entitled to it. That belief gives them a strong physique. They all have a little glow." "With that kind of income, I would worry about dying," she said. "Maybe there is no death as we know it. It's just some documents changing hands." "It's not that we don't have a station wagon ourselves."

"Our car is small, iron gray, and the doors are completely rusted." "Where's Wilder?" she always cried in that panic.It was one of her children, sitting motionless on his tricycle in the backyard. Babette and I are always talking in the kitchen.The kitchen and bedroom are the main living space here, the place of power, the source of everything.She and I agree on one point, we both use the rest of the house as storage for old furniture, toys for our respective kids and everything that isn't used, past in-laws their gifts, relics and sundries.All sorts of stuff and boxes.Why are these things so sad?They carry a kind of bad luck, a kind of bad omen.They alert me not to personal failures and setbacks, but to something more general, something larger in scope and content.

She brought Wilder in and sat him down on the kitchen counter.Denise and Steffi came downstairs and we talked about the supplies they needed for school.Soon it will be lunch time.This is a chaotic and rowdy time.We milled around, bickered for a while, and rattled utensils.Finally, contented with grabbing something from the cupboards and fridge or grabbing off each other's plates, we quietly spread mustard topping and mayonnaise on brightly colored food.The whole thing is filled with an atmosphere of absolute solemn anticipation, a reward that was finally won!The table was full, and Babette and Denise elbowed each other twice, but neither spoke.Wilder was still sitting on the counter, surrounded by open cartons, crumpled tinfoil, shiny paper bags of potato chips, bowls of paste wrapped in plastic wrap, zipper rings on soda cans, curved Squiggly wrapping strings, little bundles of orange cheese.Heinrich came in, took a good look at the scene, then went out the back door and disappeared.He is my only son.

"It's not the kind of lunch I was planning to prepare," Babette said. "I've really been taking malt and yoghurt seriously." "Where have we heard that before?" Denise said. "Maybe it's here," Steffi said. "She buys it all the time." "But she never eats it," said Steffi. "Because she's thinking, if she keeps buying this thing, in order to fix it, she's going to have to eat it. It's like she's kidding herself." "It filled half the kitchen." "But she threw it away before she ate it because it was broken," Denise said, "so then she started it all over again."

"Wherever you look," Steffi said, "it's everywhere." "She feels guilty if she doesn't buy it; she feels guilty if she buys it and doesn't eat it; she feels guilty when she sees it sitting in the fridge; she feels guilty when she throws it away." "It's like she smokes, but she doesn't," Steffi said. Denise was eleven years old and a stubborn child.She led almost daily protests against her mother's habits that she considered destructive or dangerous.I defend Babette.I told her that I was the type of person who needed to have discipline when it came to eating.I reminded her how much I liked the way she looked.I imply that there is an innate sense of honesty in big men, as long as they are just the right size.People trust people who are just the right size.

But she's not happy with her hips and thighs, so she goes for a quick trot, up the steps of the neoclassical middle school gymnasium.She said that because I like to hide the truth from the people I love, I call her shortcomings as strengths.There was something lurking in the truth, she said. The smoke alarm went off in the upstairs hallway, either to alert us that the batteries had just died or because the house was literally on fire.We finished our lunch in silence.