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By Root 283 0

hair from hanging in limp coils, so that she now has yak ears as well. Uncle David, for whom the word natty was invented, who loved to tell people that his late wife always got ready for bed behind a closed door and that as far as he knew, she woke up every morning with brushed hair and a hint of lipstick, should not have to see his niece like this. She’s not fit for company, even if it is only Isabel and William, and it never is only Isabel and William. What comes through the door is William as only Clare knows him, naked on a motel bed, sweating like a man with a fever, or cupping her chin in a restaurant and leaning forward with great, premeditated grace to kiss her. And right behind those stolen pictures come Clare’s old friends Isabel and William, the four of them playing Monopoly at Cape Cod, and right behind them, her husband, Charles, slicing limes, and behind Charles, their sons, not as they are now, but pink and adorable in their footy pajamas, Danny holding his father’s hand, Adam carrying his briefcase. Some of you will simply have to go, Clare wants to say. She smoothes out her ice pack, watches her uncle leer at Isabel, and longs for the thick, amiable hours of Percocet.

William comes in, leaning heavily on a cane, and Clare can’t even say hello; the sight of the cane just snaps her mouth shut.

David stands up to shake William’s hand and tries to take the bag of nectarines from him. He stands to demonstrate to Isabel—and it’s all right for William and Clare to see this, too; he has no objection to either of them noticing—that David and Isabel are the only two people in the room able to get up and down from the furniture whenever they please. William hugs the nectarines.

“What happened to you?” David says.

William is sorry to see David, as he always is. David is the living embodiment of William’s bad conscience about sleeping with Clare, and he is not a rueful, forgiving conscience. He is Con science as a caustic, sensual, dyspeptic old man.

“Nothing much,” William says. “How’s the heart?”

Isabel says, “Where’s Charles?”

“He’s running errands,” Clare says, and Isabel picks up the tea tray. Privately, Charles and Clare call Isabel The Governess. Isabel purses her lips just a tiny bit as she gathers the cups, and Clare can see her thinking that Charles is out gallivanting—and that would be Isabel’s word for it, gallivanting—when he should be home supervising Clare, who might try to get herself a glass of water, or worse. It’s very pleasant, it is just very warming, to have poor, good Charles on the receiving end of Isabel’s disapproval for a change, and Clare throws her shoulders back and down to lengthen her neck and smiles up at William, who smiles back with relief, thinking, She’s all right, she’s just sick of being Charles’s little cripple, as who wouldn’t be.

William stands in front of Clare.

“Sit,” Clare says, and he sits in the armchair across from David, miles away from Clare, close enough to David to pat him on the knee or, alternatively, smash him in the throat and kill him.

“Sitting,” William says. “Shall I roll over, too?”

“What’s with the cane?”

“It helps me walk more comfortably.” The thought of discussing his rheumatoid arthritis with Clare is disheartening. It is unbearable.

“Oh,” Clare says. She looks down at the bag of books Isabel has brought and pulls one out. “God bless Isabel. I like this series.”

William smiles politely.

“I never read them,” he says. “You know, Isabel goes through hundreds.”

“Are you in pain?” Clare says accusingly.

“Yes,” he says, and Clare thinks, Oh, God, he’s dying.

“I’m just in pain,” he says. “I’m not dying.”

He shouldn’t have come. He should have let Isabel come down by herself, and the women could have had some girl talk and clucked their tongues over the stupidity or cupidity of men, about which he would never argue, and have a few measured glasses of white wine (which is completely untrue to his memory of Clare, who pulled a bottle of Balvenie out of her suitcase when they were still twenty miles from their motel). He’s not going to tell Clare,