Burning House Read Online Free PDF Page B

body of a thirty-year-old, and I’m too old.”
    I kick sand, look at the ocean. I feel too full, too woozy, but I’m getting desperate to walk, to move faster.
    “Do you think Oliver and Craig will ever like each other?” I say.
    She shrugs. “Oh—I don’t want to talk about them. It’s my birthday, and I want to talk girl talk. Maybe I’ll never talk to you this way again.”
    “Why?” I say.
    “I’ve always had … 
feelings
about things. Sven made fun of me when I said at Christmas that the pool would crack. I knew both times I was pregnant I’d have boys. I so much didn’t want a second child, but now I’m glad I had him. He’s more intelligent than Craig. On my deathbed, Craig will probably bring some woman to the house who’ll steal the covers.” She bends and picks up a shiny stone, throws it into the water. “I didn’t love my first husband,” she says.
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “His spirit was dying. His spirit was dying before be got sick and died.” She runs her hand across her bare stomach. “People your age don’t talk that way, do they? We fought, and I left him, and that was in the days when young ladies did not leave young men. I got an apartment in New York, and for so many weeks I was all right—my mother sent all the nice ladies she knew over to amuse me, and it was such a relief not to have to cope. That was also in the days when young men didn’t cry, and he’d put his head on my chest and cry about things I couldn’t understand. Look at me now, with this body. I’m embarrassed by the irony of it—the dry pool, the useless body. It’s too obvious even to talk about it. I sound like T. S. Eliot, with his bank-clerk self-pity, don’t I?” She is staring at the ocean. “When I thought everything was in order—I even had a new beau—I was trying to hang a picture one morning: a painting of a field of little trees, with a doe walking through. I had it positioned where I thought it should go, and I held it to the wall and backed up, but I couldn’t quite tell, because I couldn’t back up enough. I didn’t have any husband to. hold it to the wall. I dropped it and broke the glass and cried.” She pushes her hair back, twines the rubber band she has worn on her wrist around her hair again. Through her bikini I can see the outline of the shells. Her hands hang at her sides. “We’ve come too far,” she says. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
    We are almost up to the Davises’ house. That means that we’ve walked about three miles, and through my heaviness I feel a sort of light-headedness. I’m thinking, I’m tired but it doesn’t matter. Being married doesn’t matter. Knowing how to talk about things matters. I sink down in the sand, like a novice with a revelation. Barbara looks concerned; then, a little drunkenly, I watch her face change. She’s decided that I’m just responding, taking a rest. A seagull dives, gets what it wants. We sit next to each other facing the water, her flat tan stomach facing the ocean like a mirror.
    •  •  •
    It is night, and we are still outdoors, beside the pool. Sven’s face has a flickery, shadowed look, like a jack-o’-lantern’s. A citronella candle burns on the white metal table beside his chair.
    “He decided not to call the police,” Sven says. “I agree. Since those two young ladies obviously did not
want
your crappy silver, they’re saddled with sort of pirates’ treasure, and, as we all know, pirate ships sink.”
    “You’re going to wait?” Barbara says to Craig. “How will you get all our silver back?”
    Craig is tossing a tennis ball up and down. It disappears into the darkness, then slaps into his hands again. “You know what?” he says. “One night I’ll run into them at Odeon. That’s the thing—nothing is ever the end.”
    “Well, this is my
birthday
, and I hope we don’t have to talk about things ending.” Barbara is wearing her pink T-shirt, which seems to have shrunk in the wash.