The Age of Grief - Jane Smiley [19]
Looking for the first time at the hair on the bed, Nancy began to cry. Kevin bent down and retrieved his gym shorts from under the bed and stepped into them. He said to Lily rather than Nancy, “I’m going outside. I guess my shoes are in the living room.”
Nancy sat on the bed beside the hair, looking at it. It was reddish and glossy, with the life of a healthy wild animal, an otter or a mink. Lily wished Nancy would say that she had been thinking of having it cut anyway. She thought of saying herself that Nancy could always grow it back, but that, too, was unlikely. Hair like that probably wouldn’t grow again on a thirty-year-old head. Lily picked up the shears and put them back on the shelf above her sewing table and said, “You were making love?”
The door slammed. Nancy said, “Yes, actually. I wanted to. We decided to split up.” She looked at Lily. “And then when I got in bed I felt happy and free, and I just thought it would be nice.”
“And Kevin?”
“He seemed fine! Relieved, even. We were lying there and he was holding me.”
“I can’t believe you—”
At once Nancy glared at her. “You can’t? Why are you so judgmental? This whole day has been one long trial, with you the judge and me the defendant! What do you know, anyway? You’ve never even lived with anyone! You had this sterile thing with Kenneth Diamond that was more about reading poems than screwing and then you tell my husband that I’m not in love with him anymore! Of course he was enraged. You did it! You hate tension, you hate conflict, so you cut it off, ended it. We could have gone on for years like this, and it wouldn’t have been that bad!”
“I didn’t say I knew anything. I never said I knew anything.”
Nancy put her face in her hands and then looked up and said in a low voice, “What do I look like?”
“Terrible right now—it’s very uneven. A good hairdresser can shape it, though. There’s a lot of hair left.”
Nancy reached for her robe and put it on; she picked up the hair, held it for a moment, and then, with her usual practicality, still attractive, always attractive, dropped it into the wastebasket. She glanced around the room and said, “Well, let’s clean up before he gets back, okay? And can you take me to the airport tomorrow?”
Lily nodded. They began to pick things up and put them gingerly away. When they had finished the bedroom, they turned out the light in there and began on the living room. It was difficult, Lily thought, to call it quits and go to bed. Kevin did not return. After a long silence Nancy said, “I don’t suppose any of us are going to be friends after this.” Lily shrugged, but really she didn’t suppose so either. Nancy reached up and felt the ends of her hair, and said, “Ten years ago he wouldn’t have done this to me.”
Had it really been ten years that they’d all known one another? Lily looked around her apartment, virginal again, and she was frightened by it. She felt a sudden longing for Kevin so strong that it approached desire, not for Kevin as he was but for Kevin as he seemed—self-confident, muscular, smart. Her throat closed over, as if she were about to cry. Across the room Nancy picked up one of her hairbrushes with a sigh—and she was, after all, uninjured. Lily said, “Ten years ago he might have killed you.”
Jeffrey,
Believe Me
M y fondness for you I set aside. That you have always attracted me I set aside. That I had gone seven weeks (since Harley, you will remember) without, even that I set aside. I swear to you, Jeffrey, my motives were altruistic to the last degree. Humanity was what I was thinking of. Humanity and, specifically, the gene pool.
I might, as you would perhaps suggest, have consulted you. Needless to say, I thought of it. But where? Over café mocha after dinner,