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I thought you wanted that party we're having, he says, with your sister coming for a week.

This party--our first--was long negotiated. He's noting the traffic to and from the airport, the hours of writing he'll lose. Should I offer to cancel the party in order to be picked up? When he hangs up, …

Yet for every conceivable holiday--from Easter lamb to Christmas ham--our tin-car car crunches up the drive to the Whitbread estate, which lures me in some ways and yet always saps me dry. This isn't meant to sound peevish, for the Whitbreads are never not nice. But from the second I haul my bag up…

[...] As he's locking up, he says--color blazing high on his flared cheekbones--And you quit your job. With your school loans and your father sick. Are you crazy?

[...] I want to believe I'm at home with these composed individuals. They're liberal in their politics, after all. From where I sit on the low settee wedged among needlepoint pillows, I can see a whole shelf devoted to the egalitarian writings of Thomas Jefferson. Surely they recognize my native in…

Effortless, excellence has to be. Tossed off, reflecting the ease you're born to [...] Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable, because Lord knows they'll try--without letup--to break you. Where I come from, house guests have to know you've swea…