The Last Paragraph of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road

The Last Paragraph of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road



"It's just that they were a rather strange couple. Irresponsible. The guarded way they'd look at you; the way they'd talk to you; unwholesome, sort of. Oh, and another thing. Do you know what I came across in the cellar? All dead and dried out? I came across an enormous box of sedum plantings that I must have spent an entire day collecting for them last spring. I remember very carefully selecting the best shoots and very tenderly packing them in just the right kind of soil -- that's the kind of thing I mean, you see. Wouldn't you think that when someone goes to a certain amount of trouble to give you a perfectly good plant, a living, growing thing, wouldn't you think the very least you'd do would be to--"

But from there on Howard Givings heard only a welcome, thunderous sea of silence. He had turned off his hearing aid.