Andre Dubus: Selected Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

She remembered his hard, thin legs between hers and she saw him with Holly and wary as a thief her hand slid down and she moved against it. It’s not me they’re doing it to. She listened to the sounds from the other room and moved within them against her hand.
    In his bed in his apartment Michaelis held her and his large, dark eyes were wet, and she spoke to him and kissed and dried his tears, though she felt nothing for them; she gave them her lips as she might have given coins to a beggar. She could feel nothing except that it was strange for him to cry; she did not believe she would ever cry again; not for love. It was her first night home, they had left her house three hours earlier, left her mother’s voice whose gaiety could not veil her fear and its warning: ‘Don’t be late,’ she said, meaning don’t spend the night, don’t drive our own nails through our hands; already her mother’s eyes (and, yes, her father’s too) were hesitant, vulpine. How can we get our daughter back? the eyes said. We have saved her. But now how do we get her back? Her parents’ hands and arms were loving; they held her tightly; they drew her to their hearts. The arms and eyes told her not to go to Acapulco after Christmas; not to want to go. No matter. She did not want to go. Michaelis’s arms were tight and loving too, he lay on his side, his body spent from loving her, and now she was spending his soul too, watching it drip on his cheeks: ‘—It didn’t mean anything. Don’t cry. We won’t go to Acapulco. I don’t think I’ll sleep with Brian again, but we won’t go to Acapulco. I want to do other things. I don’t know what they’ll be yet. You’ll have a good life, Michaelis. Don’t worry: you will. It’ll be a fine life. Don’t be sad. Things end, that’s all. But you’ll be fine. Do you want to take me home now? Or do you want me to stay a while. I’ll stay the night if you want—’
    She propped on an elbow and looked at him. He had stopped crying, his cheeks glistened still, and he lay on his back now, staring at the ceiling. She could see in his face that he would not make love with her again or, for some time, with anyone else. She watched him until she didn’t need to anymore. Then she called a taxi and put on her clothes. When she heard the taxi’s horn she left Michaelis lying naked in the dark.

THE WINTER FATHER
for Pat
    T HE JACKMAN’S MARRIAGE had been adulterous and violent, but in its last days, they became a couple again, as they might have if one of them were slowly dying. They wept together, looked into each other’s eyes without guile, distrust, or hatred, and they planned Peter’s time with the children. On his last night at home, he and Norma, tenderly, without a word, made love. Next evening, when he got home from Boston, they called David and Kathi in from the snow and brought them to the kitchen.
    David was eight, slender, with light brown hair nearly to his shoulders, a face that was still pretty; he seemed always hungry, and Peter liked watching him eat. Kathi was six, had long red hair and a face that Peter had fallen in love with, a face that had once been pierced by glass the shape of a long dagger blade. In early spring a year ago: he still had not taken the storm windows off the screen doors; he was bringing his lunch to the patio, he did not know Kathi was following him, and holding his plate and mug he had pushed the door open with his shoulder, stepped outside, heard the crash and her scream, and turned to see her gripping then pulling the long shard from her cheek. She got it out before he reached her. He picked her up and pressed his handkerchief to the wound, midway between her eye and throat, and held her as he phoned his doctor who said he would meet them at the hospital and do the stitching himself because it was cosmetic and that beautiful face should not be touched by residents. Norma was not at home. Kathi lay on the car seat beside him and he held his