The Pilot's Wife_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [87]
She walked until she found a park. She thought possibly she should not enter a park at night, although there were lanterns that made pools of light near the benches. The rain was letting up some, seemed merely a drizzle now. The grass had transformed itself into gray beneath the lantern light. She walked to a black bench and sat down.
She was sitting next to what appeared to be a circular rose garden. Lanterns lit the thorns of pruned canes, and the barrier looked formidable. Kathryn thought: It was not just a betrayal of me, but a betrayal of Mattie and Julia. A violation of the family circle.
The rain stopped altogether, and she put the umbrella on the bench. Her chenille scarf, in her travels, had begun to come unraveled at a corner. She fingered the unanchored stitch, gave it a tentative tug. She could fix this when she got home, remake the corner with another strand of chenille. She tugged a bit harder on the yarn, pulled out six or seven stitches, an oddly satisfying gesture. She tugged again, felt the stuttering of the tiny knots giving way.
She unraveled one row and then another. Then another and another. The yarn made a loose and pleasant tangle on her knees, at her ankles. Jack had given her the scarf for her birthday.
Kathryn pulled until she had a mound of twisted chenille as big as a small pile of leaves. She let the last of the yarn fall onto the grass. She stuck her frozen hands into the pockets of her coat.
She would have to recast all her memories now.
An older man in a tan raincoat stopped in front of her. Perhaps he was distressed to find a woman sitting on a wet bench with a tangle of yarn at her feet. Possibly he was married and was thinking of his wife. In the instant before he could ask after Kathryn, she said hello and bent to retrieve the yarn. She found the end and began to roll the black chenille into a ball rapidly, with practiced gestures.
She smiled.
“Dreadful weather,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” she said pleasantly.
Seemingly satisfied by Kathryn’s display of industry, the man moved on.
When he was gone, she tucked the yarn out of the way under the bench. She thought: I didn’t know about my daughter’s sexual life, and I didn’t know about my husband’s sexual life.
In the distance, she could see halos on street lamps, a chorus of brake lights, a couple running across a road. The rain had started again. They had on long raincoats, and the young woman wore heels. They kept their chins tucked against the rain. The man held his raincoat closed in front of his crotch with one hand, had his other arm around the woman’s shoulder, urging her forward before the light changed.
Muire Boland and Jack might have done that in this city, she thought. Run to beat a light. On the way to dinner, to a pub. To the theater. To a party to be with other people. To a bed.
Muire Boland’s marriage had weight. Two children as opposed to one. Two young children.
And then she thought: How could anything that had produced such beautiful children be thought invalid?
She walked until she saw, from a distance, the discreet marquee, a facade she recognized. The hotel was quiet when she entered, and only a clerk, standing in a cone of light behind the reception desk, greeted her. As she walked to the elevators, her clothes felt heavy and sodden.
She was enormously relieved that she could remember her room number. As she put the key in the lock, Robert emerged from the room next door.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. His forehead was furrowed, his tie loosened to the middle of his chest. “I’ve been out of my mind wondering what happened to you,” he said.
She blinked in the unflattering hall light and pushed her hair off her face.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked. Sounding, in his genuine concern, like a parent with an errant child.
She did not.
“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” he informed her.
She withdrew the key from its lock and moved to where Robert stood, holding open his door. Through the framed space, she could see a meal, virtually