Burning House Read Online Free PDF Page A

with marijuana. When they were introduced, one was wearing a Sony Walkman and the other had a tortoiseshell hair ornament in the shape of a turtle.
    Now it is getting dark and we are all having spritzers. I have had too many spritzers. I feel that everyone is looking at everyone else’s naked feet. The twins who are not twins have baby toes that curl under, so you can see the plum-colored polish on only four toes. Craig has square toenails and calluses on his heels which come from playing tennis. Oliver’s long, tan feet are rubbing my legs. The dryness of his soles feels wonderful as he rubs his feet up and down the sticky sweat that has dried on my calves. Barbara has long toenails, painted bronze. Sven’s big toes are oblong and shapeless, the way balloons look when you first begin to blow them up. My toenails aren’t polished, because I can hardly bend over. I look at Oliver’s feet and mine and try to imagine a composite baby foot. As Sven pours, it is the first time I realize that my drink is gone and I have been crunching ice.
    In our bedroom, Oliver cups his hands around my hard stomach as I lie on my side facing away from him and kissesmy hair from underneath, slowly moving down my spine to where his lips rest on one hipbone.
    “My glass of ice water just made a ring on the night table,” he says. He takes a sip of water. I hear him sigh and put the glass back on the table.
    “I want to get married,” I mumble into the pillow. “I don’t want to end up bitter, like Barbara.”
    He snorts. “She’s bitter because she kept getting married, and when the last one died he left almost everything to Craig. She’s bored with Sven, now that his pictures aren’t selling anymore.”
    “Oliver,” I say, and am surprised at how helpless I sound. “You sounded like your mother just then. At least talk sense to me.”
    Oliver slides his cheek to my buttock. “Remember the first time you rubbed my back and it felt so good that I started laughing?” Oliver says. “And you didn’t know why I was doing it and you got insulted? And the time you got drunk and sang along with Eddie Fisher on ‘Wish You Were Here’ and you were so good I laughed until I got the hiccups?” He rolls over. “We’re married,” he says. He slides his cheek to the hollow of my back. “Let me tell you what happened on the crosstown bus last week,” he goes on. “A messenger got on. Twenty or so. Carrying a pile of envelopes. Started talking CB chatter to the baby on the lap of a woman sitting next to him. The woman and the baby got off at Madison, and between there and Third he started addressing the bus in general. He said, ‘Everybody’s heard of pie in the sky. They say Smokey in the Sky. Smokey the Bear’s what they call the cops. But you know what I say? I say Bear in the Air. It’s like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”—LSD. LSD is acid.’ He had on running shoes and jeans and a white button-down shirt with a tie hanging around his neck.”
    “Why did you tell me that story?” I say.
    “
Anybody
can get it together to do something perfunctory.The minute that messenger got off the bus he tied that tie and delivered that crap he was carrying.” He turns again, sighs. “I can’t talk about marriage in this crazy house. Let’s walk on the beach.”
    “It’s so late,” I say. “It must be after midnight. I’m exhausted from sitting all day, drinking and doing nothing.”
    “I’ll tell you the truth,” he whispers. “I can’t stand to hear Barbara and Sven making love.”
    I listen, wondering if he’s putting me on. “That’s mice running through the walls,” I say.
    Sunday afternoon, and Barbara and I are walking the beach, a little tipsy after our picnic lunch. I wonder what she’d think if I told her that her son and I are not married. She gives the impression that what she hasn’t lived through she has imagined. And much of what she says comes true. She said the pool would crack; she warned Craig