Boys and Girls Together Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, and she looked sad, like a little girl who’s thinking sad thoughts, something about how strange life is, so he knew what was coming.
    â€˜Do you love me, Dick?’
    That
was what was coming.
    He began to eat the chili.
    â€˜There’s two kids inside there sleeping. We’ve been together six years. We were together a year before that, before we got married.’
    â€˜Yes, but do you love me?’
    â€˜O.K. I love you.’
    â€˜You crook!’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Well, why
don’t
you love me?’
    â€˜We’ve talked about this just about every night for seven years. I’ve told you all about it. You’re welcome to lies if they make you happy. You’re welcome to the truth if you insist on having it. Thanks for fixing the chili. You’d better have some.’
    The woman began to eat. She wasn’t acting now, she was as serious as anybody could be, he would like to be as nice as possible, but she was always asking him the questions you have got to try to answer honestly and that meant that even if he tried to be nice she would know he wasn’t telling the truth, and she wouldn’t like it. She wanted lies to be true, that’s all.
    â€˜Well, then, why isn’t it possible for anybody really to love anybody?’ she said.
    â€˜I don’t know. It’s certainly one of the things a man ought to try to get straight. Now, when you ask somebody if he loves you, you make it impossible for him to love you. The lousy question does it. And it’s not that somebody
can’t
love somebody sometimes. He can. He can really love somebody, but he can’t say he loves somebody because somebody asks him if he does. I mean anything he says at that time is either a lie or meaningless.’
    â€˜
When
do you love me?’
    â€˜When you shut up for a while. When it seems tome that something’s going on in your head that is quiet and lonely and straight and maybe even lovely. Maybe no such thing is actually going on, but I love you when there is only no evidence that it isn’t. I really love you, then. I love you tenderly, then. I almost forgot all about the red and raw body you’ve got that I enjoy so much, and I really love you, then.’
    â€˜Well, I don’t want you to forget the body, either.’
    â€˜Neither do I want to forget it, but when you shut up and go about fussing with the kids in a nice way and quiet down and think about something besides the things you’re always thinking about, then I really love you. And I love you when you bawl. That’s the truth. That’s the only thing in the world that has ever made me helpless, the way you bawl, because you bawl like all the stupid little girls of the human race bawling. I swear to God it breaks my heart when you bawl. I never saw anybody bawl that way, not even kids, except our own, both of them bawl that way.’
    â€˜I’m going to bawl all the time. I’m going to bawl right now while I’m eating this awful chili.’
    â€˜Go ahead. And don’t think I don’t know you’re smart enough to do it any time you feel like it, too, because I do. Even so, even then, the way you bawl breaks my heart and makes me love you, makes me want to protect you, take care of you.’
    â€˜Well,
that’s
something, anyway. Do you want the rest of my chili?’
    â€˜You eat it. You’ve had nothing to eat since lunch.Christ, it’s almost two, and the kids are going to start running all over the place at six.’
    â€˜Ignore them. I’ve told you to ignore them or spank them and put them back to bed.’
    â€˜You’re so God-damn smart. They can’t be ignored. They’ve got to be washed and dressed and given breakfast and turned loose in the yard, so they can live.’
    â€˜I don’t want any more of it. You finish the rest of mine. I don’t know how you can enjoy something so awful so