A Good Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been in a car accident and was lying comatose in some hospital. But those delusions usually came at four in the morning, when the insomnia was in charge. Not at eight o’clock in the evening . . . and where was that damned rubber band?
    She found it at last, lying behind the carton of catalogues she never wanted to look in again. She put it in her pocket, started to get up to look for another one without remembering where she was, and thumped her head on the bottom of the table. Darcy began to cry.
    There were no rubber bands in any of the work-table’s drawers, and that made her cry even harder. She went back through the breezeway, the terrible, inexplicable identity cards in her housecoat pocket, and got an elastic out of the kitchen drawer where she kept all sorts of semi-useful crap: paper clips, bread ties, fridge magnets that had lost most of their pull. One of these latter said DARCY RULES, and had been a stocking-stuffer present from Bob.
    On the counter, the light on top of the phone blinked steadily, saying message, message, message.
    She hurried back to the garage without holding the lapels of her housecoat. She no longer felt the outer chill, because the one inside was greater. And then there was the lead ball pulling down her guts.Elongating them. She was vaguely aware that she needed to move her bowels, and badly.
    Never mind. Hold it. Pretend you’re on the turnpike and the next rest area’s twenty miles ahead. Get this done. Put everything back the way it was. Then you can—
    Then she could what? Forget it?
    Fat chance of that.
    She bound the ID cards with the elastic, realized the driver’s license had somehow gotten back on top, and called herself a stupid bitch . . . a pejorative for which she would have slapped Bob’s face, had he ever tried to hang it on her. Not that he ever had.
    “A stupid bitch but not a bondage bitch,” she muttered, and a cramp knifed her belly. She dropped to her knees and froze that way, waiting for it to pass. If there had been a bathroom out here she would have dashed for it, but there wasn’t. When the cramp let go—reluctantly—she rearranged the cards in what she was pretty sure was the right order (blood donor, library, driver’s license), then put them back in the LINKS box. Box back in hole. Pivoting piece of baseboard closed up tight. Carton of catalogues back where it had been when she tripped on it: sticking out slightly. He would never know the difference.
    But was she sure of that? If he was what she was thinking—monstrous that such a thing should even be in her mind, when all she’d wanted just a half an hour ago was fresh batteries for the goddarn remote control—if he was, then he’d been carefulfor a long time. And he was careful, he was neat, he was the original everything-polished, everything-clean boy, but if he was what those goddarn (no, goddamned ) plastic cards seemed to suggest he was, then he must be supernaturally careful. Supernaturally watchful. Sly.
    It was a word she had never thought of in connection to Bob until tonight.
    “No,” she told the garage. She was sweating, her hair was stuck to her face in unlovely spikelets, she was crampy and her hands were trembling like those of a person with Parkinson’s, but her voice was weirdly calm, strangely serene. “No, he’s not. It’s a mistake. My husband is not Beadie .”
    She went back into the house.

- 5 -
    She decided to make tea. Tea was calming. She was filling the kettle when the phone began to ring again. She dropped the kettle into the sink—the bong sound made her utter a small scream—then went to the phone, wiping her wet hands on her housecoat.
    Calm, calm, she told herself. If he can keep a secret, so can I. Remember that there’s a reasonable explanation for all this—
    Oh, really?
    — and I just don’t know what it is. I need time to think about it, that’s all. So: calm.
    She picked up the phone and said brightly, “Ifthat’s you, handsome, come right