"Suzette Haden Elgin - Only A Housewife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

pursue
her, could possibly have gone inside it.

But even on the day of celebration it had already been obvious that the house
was too large and substantial to fold away under Elizabeth's clothing any
longer. Joro's parents were modern in their ideas -- they would no more have
thought of binding the house tight to her body to keep her longer at home than
they would have eaten raw meat. It was the first time in his life that Joro
had
ever wished that his mother and father were more old-fashioned, more
conservative, less willing to keep up with the times. He would have bound
Elizabeth's house down with a wire tight enough to strangle it, if he'd been
given a chance. But of course he had no chance! Nobody had had the decency
even
to ask him what his preferences were. As usual, he was treated abominably, and
there was not one thing he could do but stand by and watch while Elizabeth
preened and blushed and his parents beamed with pride and pleasure in their
daughter.

His mother wept to lose her youngest daughter so prematurely, of course,
knowing
that she would never again be able to see her in the flesh. But everyone at
the
ceremony and the obscenely lavish party that followed could see that Jannelle
Belledarien, who had been Jannelle of the Jade Roof, was proud nonetheless.
She
had stood in the door when it all wound to a close at last, just before
sundown;
she had waved them on their way, standing tall and straight in the archway,
her
cord as thick as a man's wrist, glowing a deep and noble scarlet, winding off
behind her into the Belledarien house's heart, pulsing with her mingled
feelings
of joy and sorrow.

It was awful. Elizabeth of the Twin Towers, indeed! Sitting in the midst of
the
fifty acres of land deeded to her by the government. Her house --with its two
absurd skinny little towers, like two budding horns on a ganglegoat --
unfolding
around her and growing day by day. Holding court. Joro swallowed bile each
time
he thought of it, and he had known that it represented some sort of watershed
point that he must get past. He could not go on living under the discontented
eyes of his parents and listening to their complaints about his behavior. He
had
to get away, be on his own, be his own man!

It baffled Joro that no woman would have him for husband. It made no sense. He
was a man of substance. He was a scientist with a growing reputation and a