Anchor Books, New York 2001
jh: 
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Father knew that too, although he was far from pleased: Laura had jumped the gun and usurped his own position as host, and next thing he knew she’d be inviting every orphan and bum and hard-luck case to his dinner table as if he was Good King Wenceslas.
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People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible. But I was beyond such childishness; I was breathing the high bleak air of disillusionment, or thought I was.
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It struck me that Richard had wanted to go out with them not only because he wanted to surround himself with a small coterie of cringers, but because he didn’t want to be alone with me. I could scarcely blame him: I had little to say. Nonetheless, he was now – in company – solicitous of me, placing my coat with tenderness over my shoulders, paying me small, cherishing attentions, keeping a hand always on me, lightly, somewhere. Every once in a while he’d scan the room, checking over the other men in it to see who was envying him.
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I was startled for a moment, but I was old enough to know what it was supposed to be. The sound was meant to be laughter. It was only Father, pretending to be Santa Claus, and he wasn’t burning – it was only the tree lit up behind him, it was only the wreath of candles on his head. He had his red brocade dressing gown on, backwards, and a beard made out of cotton batten.
Mother used to say he never knew his own strength: he never knew how big he was in relation to everyone else. He wouldn’t have known how frightening he might seem. He was certainly frightening to Laura.
“You screamed and screamed,” I said now. “You didn’t understand he was just pretending.”
“It was worse than that,” said Laura. “I thought he was pretending the rest of the time.”
“What do you mean?” “That this was what he was really like,” said Laura patiently. “That underneath, he was burning up. All the time.”
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In a vigorous and hard-hitting speech entitled “Minding Our Own Business,” delivered at the Wednesday meeting of the Empire Club in Toronto, Mr. Richard E. Griffen, President and Chairman of Griffen-Chase-Royal Consolidated Industries Ltd., praised the outstanding efforts of the British Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, which have resulted in last week’s Munich Accord. It was significant, said Mr. Griffen, that all parties in the British House of Commons cheered the news, and he hoped that all parties in Canada would also cheer, as this accord would put paid to the Depression and would usher in a new “golden era” of peace and prosperity. It also went to show the value of statesmanship and diplomacy as well as positive thinking and plain old hard-headed business sense. “If everyone gives a little,” he said, “then everyone stands to gain a lot.”
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