The New Yorker Stories - Ann Beattie [81]
Sarah squirms away from him, runs from the room and up the stairs in the dark.
George looks blankly after her, then sinks to the floor and smiles. He is going to pass it off as a joke. Julie looks at him in horror, and from upstairs Sarah can be heard sobbing. Her crying awakens the baby.
“Excuse me,” Lenore says. She climbs the stairs and goes into her son’s room, and picks him up. She talks gently to him, soothing him with lies. He is too sleepy to be alarmed for long. In a few minutes he is asleep again, and she puts him back in his crib. In the next room Sarah is crying more quietly now. Her crying is so awful that Lenore almost joins in, but instead she pats her son. She stands in the dark by the crib and then at last goes out and down the hallway to her bedroom. She takes off her clothes and gets into the cold bed. She concentrates on breathing normally. With the door closed and Sarah’s door closed, she can hardly hear her. Someone taps lightly on her door.
“Mrs. Anderson,” Julie whispers. “Is this your room?”
“Yes,” Lenore says. She does not ask her in.
“We’re going to leave. I’m going to get Sarah and leave. I didn’t want to just walk out without saying anything.”
Lenore just cannot think how to respond. It was really very kind of Julie to say something. She is very close to tears, so she says nothing.
“Okay,” Julie says, to reassure herself. “Good night. We’re going.”
There is no more crying. Footsteps. Miraculously, the baby does not wake up again, and Maria has slept through all of it. She has always slept well. Lenore herself sleeps worse and worse, and she knows that George walks much of the night, most nights. She hasn’t said anything about it. If he thinks she’s simple, what good would her simple wisdom do him?
The oak tree scrapes against the window in the wind and rain. Here on the second floor, under the roof, the tinny tapping is very loud. If Sarah and Julie say anything to George before they leave, she doesn’t hear them. She hears the car start, then die out. It starts again—she is praying for the car to go—and after conking out once more it rolls slowly away, crunching gravel. The bed is no warmer; she shivers. She tries hard to fall asleep. The effort keeps her awake. She squints her eyes in concentration instead of closing them. The only sound in the house is the electric clock, humming by her bed. It is not even midnight.
She gets up, and without turning on the light, walks downstairs. George is still in the living room. The fire is nothing but ashes and glowing bits of wood. It is as cold there as it was in the bed.
“That damn bitch,” George says. “I should have known she was a stupid little girl.”
“You went too far,” Lenore says. “I’m the only one you can go too far with.”
“Damn it,” he says, and pokes the fire. A few sparks shoot up. “Damn it,” he repeats under his breath.
His sweater is still wet. His shoes are muddy and ruined. Sitting on the floor by the fire, his hair matted down on his head, he looks ugly, older, unfamiliar.
She thinks of another time, when it was warm. They were walking on the beach together, shortly after they met, gathering shells. Little waves were rolling in. The sun went behind the clouds and there was a momentary illusion that the clouds were still and the sun was racing ahead of them. “Catch me,” he said, breaking away from her. They had been talking quietly, gathering shells. She was so surprised at him for breaking away that she ran with all her energy and did catch him, putting her hand out and taking hold of the band of his swimming trunks as he veered into the water. If she hadn’t stopped him, would he really have run far out into the water, until she couldn’t follow anymore? He turned on her, just as abruptly as he had run away, and grabbed her and hugged her hard, lifted her high. She had clung to him, held him close. He had tried the same thing when he came back from the walk with