Joy Williams - Taking Care

For insurance purposes, Jones’s wife is brought out to the car in a wheelchair. She is thin and beautiful. Jones is grateful and confused. He has a mad wish to tip the orderly. Have so many years really passed? Is this not his wife, his love, fresh from giving birth? Isn’t everything about to begin? In Mexico, his daughter wanders disinterestedly through a jewelry shop where she picks up a small silver egg. It opens on a hinge and inside are two figures, a bride and groom. Jones puts the baby in his wife’s arms. At first the baby is alarmed because she cannot remember this person very well and she reaches for Jones, whimpering. But soon she is soothed by his wife’s soft voice and she falls asleep in her arms as they drive. Jones has readied everything carefully for his wife’s homecoming. The house is clean and orderly. For days he has restricted himself to only one part of the house so that his clutter will be minimal. Jones helps his wife up the steps to the door. Together they enter the shining rooms.

Joy Williams is the author of four novels, three short story collections, and a history of the Florida Keys. She has received the Rea Award for the short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her most recent novel, The Quick and the Dead , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.