Constance Read Online Free PDF

at me in the dim glow of the night-light was Howard. He was a restless sleeper like me. Swiftly I went to him.
    —What are you doing?
    —You woke me up.
    I took his hand and led him back into his bedroom.
    —I’m so sorry, I whispered. Let’s get you back in bed, shall we?
    I sat him down on the bed and he wriggled in under the sheet. He turned on his side and gazed up at me.
    —Were you and Papa fighting?
    —Just talking loud. Go to sleep now.
    —Talking loud, he murmured, and fell asleep.
    I sat beside him on the bed for a few minutes. When I left him I met Sidney in the hallway.
    —He asleep? he said.
    I nodded. I put my arms round him. He was surprised. I asked him to hold me. Tentatively at first, then with more conviction, he held me. I felt quiet now. His presence sometimes had this effect. I lay my cheek on his shoulder. He began to stroke my hair. Then he lifted my chin and took my face in his fingers and kissed me. He steered me toward the bedroom. Once, we’d resolved all our quarrels in bed. When we were inside he kicked the door shut. He pushed me down on the bed. He began to undress me. I sat up. I wasn’t sure I wanted this.
    —Sidney—
    —Don’t talk.
    He watched me closely as he stepped out of his trousers. Then he was lying beside me on the bed.
    —Just wait, I whispered, I’m not ready. All right, that’s better. Now you can.
    Times like that I loved him but they were rare.
    I went by Iris’s apartment again the next day. I wanted to know if she’d thought any more about medical school. Her eyes were red and her hair was lank and sweaty: two bad nights and she looked like death. She told me that more and more she was losing the thread and drifting into the past.
    —Oh, honey.
    I didn’t find it easy to contain my irritation. Distinct scenes presented as though from some ill-remembered movie, she said, and it was the passion of those days that roused such anguish in her. But then she was telling me she wasn’t the woman she’d been when she first met him. You laugh, Constance, she said, but it’s true: I’ve changed. I’ve grown up. I can love that man now, and the irony is I won’t be given a chance even though he needs me—
    This was Iris, clinging to a fraying thread of hope, sustaining the belief that the man wasn’t lost to her forever. I thought about it in the subway going home, crowded between men in thin ties and bad-tempered women exhausted from fending them off. But of course he was lost to her. She would never get him back now. She was drinking heavily, often alone, and I suspected her life had gone off the rails in ways she wasn’t telling me about. And her response when I’d asked her what this “hostessing” involved!
    —It’s just looking after men.
    —What do you mean?
    —They have to have a good time. Spend money.
    —On you?
    —Sure, on me! What is this, the third degree? You think I have sex with them?
    —Do you?
    She gave me a look I found hard to read. I knew what it wasn’t, it wasn’t an outraged negative.
    —Iris, are you
whoring?
    —Very funny.
    I left her in good spirits, halfway drunk at five in the afternoon. I thought, New York’s going to destroy that girl if she’s not careful.
    Later with Gladys’s help I made supper for Howard. He was sitting quietly at the kitchen table. Then he looked up and made his solemn announcement.
    —Constance and Papa weren’t fighting last night. They were just talking loud.
    Gladys was amused. What an odd little boy he was. I was growing fond of him.
    —That’s right, Howard, I said. We were just talking loud.

Chapter 2
    The day they started tearing down the old Penn Station I heard from my lawyer, Ed Kaplan, that the divorce from Barb had gone through. Ed commiserated. Sidney, he said, it’s nobody’s fault. I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t nobody’s fault, I said, there’d been love when we started, what happened to it? I let it die. My son Howard, age six, was living with his mother in