The Bell Jar - nubuk.com

MR. WILLARD drove me up to the Adirondacks.
It was the day after Christmas and a gray sky bellied over us, fat with snow. I felt
overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if
whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents
and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols and the piano promised
never came to pass.
At Christmas I almost wished I was a Catholic.
First Mr. Willard drove and then I drove. I don't know what we talked about, but
as the countryside, already deep under old falls of snow, turned us a bleaker shoulder, and
as the fir trees crowded down from the gray hills to the road edge, so darkly green they
looked black, I grew gloomier and gloomier.
I was tempted to tell Mr. Willard to go ahead alone, I would hitchhike home.
But one glance at Mr. Willard's face -- the silver hair in its boyish crewcut, the
clear blue eyes, the pink cheeks, all frosted like a sweet wedding cake with the innocent,
trusting expression -- and I knew I couldn't do it. I'd have to see the visit through to the
end.
At midday the grayness paled a bit, and we parked in an icy turnoff and shared
out the tunafish sandwiches and the oatmeal cookies and the apples and the thermos of
black coffee Mrs. Willard had packed for our lunch.
Mr. Willard eyed me kindly. Then he cleared his throat and brushed a few last
crumbs from his lap. I could tell he was going to say something serious, because he was
very shy, and I'd heard him dear his throat in that same way before giving an important
economics lecture.
"Nelly and I have always wanted a daughter."
For one crazy minute I thought, Mr. Willard was going to announce that Mrs.
Willard was pregnant and expecting a baby girl. Then he said, "But I don't see how any
daughter could be nicer than you."
Mr. Willard must have thought I was crying because I was so glad he wanted to
be a father to me. "There, there," he patted my shoulder and cleared his throat once or
twice. "I think we understand each other."
Then he opened the car door on his side and strolled round to my side, his breath
shaping tortuous smoke signals in the gray air. I moved over to the seat he had left and he
started the car and we drove on.
I'm not sure what I expected of Buddy's sanatorium.
I think I expected a kind of wooden chalet perched up on top of a small mountain,
with rosy-cheeked young men and women, all very attractive but with hectic glittering
eyes, lying covered with thick blankets on outdoor balconies.
"TB is like living with a bomb in your lung," Buddy had written to me at college.
"You just lie around very quietly hoping it won't go off."
I found it hard to imagine Buddy lying quietly. His whole philosophy of life was
to be up and doing every second. Even when we went to the beach in the summer he
never lay down to drowse in the sun the way I did. He ran back and forth or played ball
or did a little series of rapid pushups to use the time.
Mr. Willard and I waited in the reception room for the end of the afternoon rest
cure.