• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 500 0

Madison Avenue and had not been able to resist a new dress for her birthday and besides he gave her such a small allowance, too little to run the house, and she was working so hard taking care of the baby, taking classes, taking his clothes to the cleaner and she hated the way she sounded but more she was frightened of the look on his face as if she could control everything she did, didn’t he know by now that she was the kind of person who would be struck still on a street corner, someone for whom time had no real meaning, a person whose mind was not quite like everyone else’s, and it was all an affront to him instead of a cry for closeness she missed him she was lonely. Not long after that she heard about the photographer’s upcoming show at the Museum of Modern Art. Iris had worked at the museum right after college and still had friends there. She had the address of the brownstone in her change purse.

She could not have those pictures hanging in a museum when those pictures should have been hers. They were more than hers, they were her.

Pearl

Her eyes were red and her nose was red and a strand of hair was stuck to her cheek. She was in bed when he got home. She didn’t have to tell him that it had happened again. Joe held her and he felt her neck wet with tears and the lace on her slip wet with tears and he thought that the only thing more painful than unrequited love was unrequited life.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The waitress left two cloudy glasses of water on the table and walked away. Joe took out a cigarette although he rarely smoked and he lit it and turned his head to blow out the smoke. Vivian sat with her coat wrapped tightly around her, a scarf still at her throat. She looked pale.

She looked out the window onto an empty lot. They were at a diner on Eighth Avenue in the Thirties. She did not want to risk seeing anyone either of them knew and he had eaten in this all-night coffee shop after gigs. The table was edged with aluminum and the booths smelled of fresh leather. He reached out to take her hand across the Formica but she left it loosely around her glass. Her other hand was in her pocket.

Do you want anything to eat?

No thanks. I don’t have any appetite.

Shouldn’t you have something?

I’m not hungry.

Outside it began to snow. First the gentlest confetti swirled down one at a time like the last remnants of a celebration. Then they began to accumulate and the swirls grew thicker and looked like the long white hair of angels falling down.

The waitress returned and Joe ordered a coffee and a slice of pie. He knew that he wouldn’t eat the pie but he felt bad for the girl and thought that he should order something. When it came the pie sat uneaten on the table, a sweet stark reminder of his foolishness.

He blew out more smoke. He took a sip of coffee. He accepted that she wasn’t going to hold his hand.

I told her, he said.

Her right eye trembled. Her left eye stayed calm.

After what happened we both felt like we could discuss some things. He paused. She said she would like for us to be happy. You and me.

She looked back out the window. The snow was coming now in what appeared to be great heaps like someone was throwing it off a truck. That was it for the angels.

That’s unbelievably kind, she said. You’re very lucky.

We are, he said.

You are, she said, to have such a devoted wife.

He blew out a long stream of smoke this time. It spilled against the window as if it were trying to reach out to the snow, its distant cousin.

I think we could be happy now.

I thought so too, she said.

That doesn’t seem like a yes, he said.

Her hair was piled up in a bun. He could see the fine delicate line of her jaw when she turned to look out the window. Her dark lashes against her pale skin. The tiny rubies in her earrings that he knew had come from her grandfather’s jewelry store. The loose pieces of hair curling at her temple.

This, what’s happened, it’s forced me to think, she said. I don’t think I’m ready for this. She glanced downward.

We don’t have to do that yet. There are ways not to. We could start