Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [24]
What she actually felt after her boyfriend left, no one knew. She came in carrying the groceries, the screen door banged behind her. She answered the phone, took messages. In the evening she sat on the worn couch with Christopher watching television upstairs. Sometimes they both laughed. The shelves were piled with games, plastic toys, children’s books. Once in a while Christopher was told to bring one down so his mother could read him a story. It was very important that he like books, Gloria said.
It was a pale blue envelope with Arabic printing in the corner. Truus opened it standing at the kitchen counter and began to read the letter. The handwriting was childish and small. Dear Truus, it said. Thank you for your letter. I was glad to receive it. You don’t have to put so many stamps on letters to Saudi Arabia though. One U.S. airmail is enough. I’m glad to hear you miss me. She looked up. Christopher was banging on something in the doorway.
“This won’t work,” he said.
He was dragging a toy car that had to be pumped with air to run.
“Here, let me see,” she said. He seemed on the verge of tears. “This fits here, doesn’t it?” She attached the small plastic hose. “There, now it will work.”
“No, it won’t,” he said.
“No, it won’t,” she mimicked.
He watched gloomily as she pumped. When the handle grew stiff she put the car on the floor, pointed it, and let it go. It leapt across the room and crashed into the opposite wall. He went over and nudged it with his foot.
“Do you want to play with it?”
“No.”
“Then pick it up and put it away.”
“He didn’t move.
“Put … it … away …” she said, in a deep voice, coming toward him one step at a time. He watched from the corner of his eye. Another tottering step. “Or I eat you,” she growled.
He ran for the stairs shrieking. She continued to chant, shuffling slowly toward the stairs. The dog was barking. Gloria came in the door, reaching down to pull off her shoes and kick them to one side. “Hi, any calls?” she asked.
Truus abandoned her performance. “No. No one.”
Gloria had been visiting her mother, which was always tiresome. She looked around. Something was going on, she realized. “Where’s Christopher?”
A glint of blond hair appeared above the landing.
“Hello, darling,” she said. There was a pause. “Mummy said hello. What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
“We’re just playing a game,” Truus explained.
“Well, stop playing for a moment and come and kiss me.”
She took him into the living room. Truus went upstairs. Sometime later she heard her name being called. She folded the letter which she had read for the fifth or sixth time and went to the head of the stairs. “Yes?”
“Can you come down?” Gloria called. “He’s driving me crazy.
“He’s impossible,” she said, when Truus arrived. “He spilled his milk, he’s kicked over the dog water. Look at this mess!”
“Let’s go outside and play a game,” Truus said to him, reaching for his hand which he pulled away. “Come. Or do you want to go on the pony?”
He stared at the floor. As if she were alone in the room she got down on her hands and knees. She shook her hair loose and made a curious sound, a faint neigh, pure as the tinkle of glass. She turned to gaze indifferently at him over her shoulder. He was watching.
“Come,” she said calmly. “Your pony is waiting.”
After that when the letters arrived, Truus would fold them and slip them into her pocket while Gloria went through the mail: bills, gallery openings, urgent requests for payment, occasionally a letter. She wrote very few herself but always complained when she did not receive them. Comments on the logic of this only served to annoy her.
The fall was coming. Everything seemed