Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [62]
He makes his way around the Buick. He has his suitcase in one hand. When he reaches her, he puts his free arm around his wife, pulling her to him in a halfhearted embrace. The smell of him is foul, that of an unwashed body, of stale liquor on the breath.
Perhaps she recoils. He lets his arm drop from her shoulder. He walks toward the house, and it is as though he has already forgotten she is there. His posture is different — a slight hunch, the shoulders more rounded than she has remembered. He stumbles on a flagstone. He hesitates a moment on the doorstep, as if taken aback by the wreath.
Honora follows Sexton into the house. In the brighter light of the kitchen, she can see the uneven stubble on his chin, the deep bluish circles under his eyes, which are red rimmed.
He’s been crying, she thinks.
“I was worried when you didn’t come,” she says.
“I’m sorry for that.”
“What happened to you?”
“What happened to me?”
She waits for his answer, but he seems unable, or unwilling, to fill the silence. After a time, she puts the kettle under the tap. But then she has to put the kettle down because her hands are shaking so badly.
“I’ve lost my job,” he says.
She presses her fingers hard against the lip of the sink.
“I’m going to lose the car,” he says. “The bank is calling in the loan.”
“Why?” she asks, turning.
He sits abruptly in the chair, as if his legs have simply given out. He rests his elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands. “Banks are calling in loans all over the place,” he says. “It’s the same everywhere.”
“They can’t do that,” Honora says. “I don’t understand. They made that loan in good faith.”
“They can do anything they want.”
Honora wishes her husband would look at her. She can see only the top of his hat. There’s a smear of something like slush on the crown, as if he’d dropped it. “Have we lost the house?” she asks.
“Not yet.”
Not yet.
“What happened?” she asks. “You got a letter?”
“I got a letter. I went to the bank this morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Still he won’t look at her. Even when he glances up in her direction, his eyes slide sideways off her face.
“And that was it?” she asks. She can hear the rising note of panic in her own voice. “They just said, ‘Well, we made this loan and now we’re taking it back’?”
“Something like that.”
She moves to the icebox and removes the tray beneath the ice. It’s full of water and sloshes as she draws it out. Carrying it carefully, she walks with it to the back door, opens the door, and tosses the water out. She puts the tray back in the icebox.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m emptying the ice tray.”
“For God’s sakes, Honora.”
“I’ll heat up something for dinner. There’s no time to cook the goose now.”
“I’m not hungry.”
She moves slowly to the kitchen table and sits in the only other chair. He turns and puts his arm on the linen cloth, but he doesn’t reach far enough to touch her. He still hasn’t taken off his coat, and she can smell his whiskey breath across the table.
“I took a gamble,” he says. “I did something that wasn’t exactly wrong but wasn’t exactly by the book either. Wasn’t strictly on the up-and-up.”
“What was it?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“I don’t need to know?”
“For crying out loud, Honora.”
She draws the platter of sea glass toward her. She thinks of her Christmas Eve dinner — the goose, the onions, the brussels sprouts, the pies. She fingers a piece of milk glass and holds it up to the light. How dare he take this tone with her? Isn’t it her car, her house, her life too? She lifts a shard of bubbled glass from the platter and examines the edges. She thinks of the presents in the front room: the Multi-Vider pen that she paid for by scrimping from the household money, the argyle vest she spent hours knitting. She sifts the sea glass through her fingers. She minds most of all that he has taken from her the pristine jewel of what might have been.
I’ve married a man who isn’t entirely honest, she thinks.
“You and your goddamned sea glass,” Sexton mutters.
She wants her husband to leave the room. To go upstairs and