Away from Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

slightly different,” he said. “And my hand is this way from years of playing tennis. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
    “Oh, you’d never disappoint me!” Ernestine cried. Her face was flushed from the heat and the highballs, and her nose and cheeks were shiny.
    Helen felt Margie kick her lightly on the ankle. She turned to smile at her friend, and Margie winked at her almost imperceptibly. She could see that Margie was trying not to giggle, and looking at Margie’s elaborately restrained face almost made Helen laugh with her. They looked away from each other then. But the moment she was not in contact with the contagion of Margie’s amusement Helen began to wonder what was so funny after all. When Ernestine had said, “Your husband certainly worries about you. He insisted we come over,” Helen had felt a soft happiness—the reassurance of love. No matter how many years she lived with Bert she knew she would never stop needing to have him show her he loved her. But, of course, he had not come over to see if she were all right; he had come here to escape Ernestine. It was a completely different thing. For a moment Helen almost felt like getting up with some excuse and leaving him here to suffer Ernestine’s coy passes and tentaclelike fingers.
    There is always the moment at a not quite successful party when you feel as though you have been dropped from a height of gaiety and suddenly everyone is unpleasantly revealed; and you are totally alone watching them, wondering what you are doing there anyway. These are the same people who were so entertaining a few minutes ago, you think, but now they just look tired, their chatter is forced and endless, and your face is weary from smiling at them. It is the moment to leave, but of course you never can leave just then, so the rest of the evening turns into a black abyss in which you wait and wait and wait, despising yourself for being so conventional and polite instead of inventing a headache or an urgent late appointment. It was that moment now for Helen. She looked at the large blonde flirting with Bert, at Mil Burns, at Linda in her tight little curls, and at all the other expatriate wives who were huddled together for protection and warmth in a strange land, guarding their old customs and keeping away the intruders. Mil and Phil had invited a Brazilian, it was true, but he was a tame Brazilian. He spoke perfect English, he had spent years in the States, he had money, he acted chivalrous but not wolfish, he never expressed violent or controversial ideas. He was almost wearing a Brooks Brothers’ suit. It seemed, Helen thought, as if they had invited the tame Brazilian as a sort of inoculation. They figured if they could survive him they would be immune, and eventually when they had to go out into the city and meet real Brazilians, then they would be safe.
    What do they think they’re going to catch, Helen wondered, mumps? And there are Embassy people here too, and Phil Burns the Brazilophile is so happy that he’s snared a tame Brazilian and all these other international types. But except for a few topazes and amethysts and aquamarines and one or two foreign clichés in their conversation, these people might as well still be at home. Maybe I’m exactly the same; who is to tell? How can I be different, when this is all I know?
    Margie tapped her arm. “We’re leaving. It’s twelve o’clock. Do you want to go?”
    “Oh, yes!”
    There was a confusion of goodbyes at the door; Mil telling them not to go, Phil arranging a luncheon date with Neil, a woman Helen had never seen before who happened to be standing near the doorway and who smiled at her slightly and said, “Goodbye. It was very nice meeting you.” Ernestine trailed Helen and Bert to the door.
    “This is the way the Brazilians say goodbye,” Ernestine said, and flung her arms around Bert’s neck, kissing him soundly on first one cheek and then the other. It was her own variation on the formal, airy