Ed King Read Online Free PDF Page B

be rested and to have lost ten long-resistant pounds. She wanted her life back, she said. She sounded hopeful. Walter said he wanted that for her, too, then asked her to explain what her illness had been about. What did the shrinks say? What was behind it? Lydia told him that it was very complex and without an easy, all-purpose explanation. It went back to her childhood, he gathered she was saying. Her mother had been beautiful and slim. Her father, a small-town accountant, had been distant. The main thing was, she felt better now.
    Walter brought Lydia’s suitcase into the house, while Lydia brought a regal calm. The kids greeted her with no less affection than if there’d never been a Diane Burroughs. Lydia got down on the floor with them right away, the better to deploy her newfound serenity, and so did Walter, miserably. Diane turned out to be a consummate actress, and introduced herself to Lydia wearing culottes, an apron, and pigtails she flipped to entertain the kids while extolling the “tasteful, modern decorating scheme” in the Cousins home and the “marvelously quiet” electric dishwasher. That was the full extent of her welcome. She kept aloof from the rest of the family reunion, as if to exercise English serving-class discretion. Then it was time to eat what she’d prepared—a summertime salad of cold poached chicken breasts laid on spinach leaves, with mandarin oranges and almond slivers. The kids had mostly Tater Tots, and, for dessert, a Duncan Hines chocolate cake that Lydia declined, claiming fresh resolve. Diane told Lydia she looked beautiful.
    After dinner, Walter and Lydia sat in the back yard while Diane did the dishes and watched the kids. There was some talk about flowerbeds, about changing things, about a birdbath and pavers and less weeding. Walter felt half present for this dialogue, preoccupied, as he was, with marital angst. What to do? What came next? What was his future with Diane? He tried focusing on Lydia, who looked good on the patio—in fact, with her post-institutionalized, preternatural calm, and minus ten pounds, she looked better, in his eyes, than she had for a long time, and not at all furrowed, desultory, or anxious. Walter knew she hadn’t “done it” for a month, which meant doing it with her tonight should be betterthan it normally was. Unfortunately, he was beset by morose feelings that he knew would detract.
    When he thought he could do so without giving Lydia the impression that he was abandoning her on the night of her return to the family circle, he said, “I’ll go check on the kids.”
    “Good,” answered Lydia. “I’ll take a shower.”
    Walter retreated. Being out of Lydia’s presence was a reprieve—he didn’t have to hold his face to a false expression, and he could anguish without worrying how it looked. At Diane’s bedroom door, he gave a warning knock, then opened it and said, “Kids! It’s time to calm down now and brush your teeth.”
    It took a while, but Barry and Tina finally went—right after he’d told them to, with severity at last, for the fourth time. Walter shut Diane’s bedroom door behind them, stood against it, and said—to a teen-ager in culottes—“What now?”
    “We’ll find out, won’t we.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Plenty of things.”
    “What does that mean?” asked Walter.
    He pinched her chin between his fingers, the better to admire her face before moving in to kiss her, but Diane pushed his hand off and stepped back. “Don’t do that,” she said. “Not now.”
    “Okay,” said Walter. “I understand.”
    It didn’t at all surprise him, forty minutes later, to find that he had trouble in the sexual department with the freshly washed, scented, and slightly damp Lydia. Under him she felt urgent for renewed affections of a sort that at the moment he was incapable of providing. After much effort, he softly snaked into her, where he found himself wallowing not in pleasure but in guilt. Lydia’s