Page 19 of Love


  Her scar has disappeared. I sit near her once in a while out at the cemetery. We are the only two who visit him. She is offended by the words on his tombstone and, legs crossed, perches on its top so the folds of her red dress hide the insult: “Ideal Husband. Perfect Father.” Other than that, she seems content. I like it when she sings to him. One of those down-home, raunchy songs that used to corrupt everybody on the dance floor. “Come on back, baby. Now I understand. Come back, baby. Take me by the hand.” Either she doesn’t know about me or has forgiven me for my solution, because she doesn’t mind at all if I sit a little ways off, listening. But once in a while her voice is so full of longing for him, I can’t help it. I want something back. Something just for me. So I join in. And hum.

  ALSO BY TONI MORRISON

  FICTION

  Paradise

  Jazz

  Beloved

  Tar Baby

  Song of Solomon

  Sula

  The Bluest Eye

  NONFICTION

  The Dancing Mind

  Playing in the Dark:

  Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2003 by Toni Morrison

  All rights reserved under International and

  Pan-American Copyright Conventions

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Morrison, Toni.

  Love / Toni Morrison.

  p. cm.

  1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Seaside resorts—Fiction. 3. Hotelkeepers—Fiction. 4. Rich people—Fiction.

  5. Death—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.O8749L68 2003

  813’.54—dc21 2003052737

  eISBN: 978-1-4000-4185-5

  v3.0

 


 

  Toni Morrison, Love

  (Series: # )

 

 


 

 
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