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“Fine. Everything is ready.”

“Oh, that’s lovely, dear.”

The phone. I can’t intercept her. She’s too quick.

“Rachel – it’s for you.”

Her voice rises in questionment. Damn. I am shaking and cannot seem to stop. Mother, her mock-diamond earrings flickering in the hall light, hands me the receiver and a blank look.

“Hello.”

“Hi. Sorry I didn’t phone you earlier, Rachel. I meant to, but this place has been like a circus today. Are you busy?”

“When? Now?”

“Yes.”

In the livingroom the voices mercifully begin again.

“No – I’m not busy.”

“Can I pick you up in – let’s say a quarter of an hour?”

“Yes. That would be fine.”

He laughs. “I like that polite voice of yours. I’m glad it’s deceptive, though.”

“Is it?”

“Well, that’s my impression. I could be wrong.”

“Although you so rarely are?”

“That’s it, darling. You’ve got it. Well – see you.”

I have to summon Mother. She comes out looking anxious.

“What is it, Rachel? Is anything the matter?”

“No. No, of course not. It’s just – well, I’m going out for a little while. With Nick.”

If she had not answered the phone, I think I would have told her Calla was ill and I had to go over there. It isn’t that I want to lie to her. But she invites it, even demands it. Whoever said the truth shall make you free never knew this kind of house. Now she’s upset.

“Is that the same person, Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s too late to go the movie, dear.”

If I laughed, she would be hurt, really hurt.

“We’ll go to the Regal and have coffee. I like talking to him.”

“Well, dear, you do what you think best. I’d never suggest you shouldn’t go. Only, on a bridge night – well, never mind. We’ll just have to stop playing while I do the serving, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry. Honestly. It’s just that –”

“Oh, I quite understand, dear. You go right ahead. I know it doesn’t happen very often. It’s just that you’re always here, on a bridge night, that’s all, and it’s such a help to me.”

I won’t go, then – I find the words are there already in my throat, and yet I force them back. This newfound ruthlessness exhilarates me. I won’t turn back. If I do, I’m done for. Yet I can’t look at her, either, or see the sallowness of her face.

“Well –” her voice is like a thread of gum, stretched thin from someone’s mouth until it may break and dangle, “I guess Verla won’t mind giving me a hand with the cups and things –”

“I’m sorry. I mean, to leave you like this. But I won’t be late.”

“No,” she says, circling my wrist with her white sapphire-ringed hand, “don’t be, dear, will you?”

The Kazliks’ place is about three miles out of town, along the gravel highway where the telephone wires hum like the harps of the wind. The house is set back from the road, indistinguishable from a thousand frame farmhouses planted among the poplars. The barn, though, is splendid and enormous, as newly white as an egg. At the front of the house someone, Nick’s mother probably, has planted orange and yellow calendula, and blue larkspur and zinnias stiff and dowdy as paper flowers.

“I’ve never been here before.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would have been.”

“How long are your parents away for?”

“Oh, just a few days, likely. My mother would like to stay a week, at least, at her brother’s place in Galloping Mountain, but the old man will never stay away that long. He doesn’t trust me. Jago is here, but nevertheless my dad expects to get back and find the business in ruins. Of course, he’s quite right in a way. I don’t know the first thing about cows, except what I remember from when I was a kid, and that was as little as possible.”

“Didn’t you ever like the place, Nick?”

“I guess before I started school I did. Not after that. Historical irony – it took my father fifteen years to build up that herd of his, and I used to wish every goddamn cow would drop dead.”

“What did you wish he’d been?”

“Oh – doctor, lawyer, merchant chief. Even a railway-man.”

“Or undertaker?”

“No,” Nick says with a smile, “not that. Did it bug you?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Don’t misunderstand, though.