Good Intentions Read Online Free PDF Page A

speaking to his back as she carefully adjusted her body around his.
    “I wouldn’t like you with one leg,” he said.
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “Can we go to sleep now?”
    “Do you think I should go on that watermelon diet?”
    “Why don’t you try counting watermelons instead of sheep? It’ll probably accomplish the same thing.”
    “Philip, I’m having a crisis here,” she said, only half joking. “You’re the psychiatrist. Help me out.”
    “Office hours are from eight A.M. till four P.M. every weekday.”
    “Please.”
    He flipped on his back and then propped himself up on one elbow to face her. “What happened in that bathroom? Who were you talking to in there?”
    “Do you think I’m attractive?”
    “I think you’re just fine.”
    “‘Just fine’ is not exactly what I was hoping to hear.”
    “Renee,” he said, his voice kind although she recognized a hint of impatience at its edges, “you are a bright, capable woman …”
    “I know that. I know I’m a bright, capable woman.”
    “You’re a lawyer.”
    “I know I’m a lawyer. You don’t have to tell me I’m a lawyer.”
    “You have a husband who loves you.”
    “Do I? Do I have a husband who loves me?”
    “What do you think?”
    “Office hours are from eight to four,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “Don’t ask me what I think. Save that for your patients. Tell me that you love me. Tell me that you think I’m the most beautiful thing on earth.”
    “I love you. I think you’re the most beautiful thing on earth.”
    “Why don’t I believe you?”
    “Because even though you’re a bright, capable woman and a very successful attorney, you also happen to be a hysterical female, and if I don’t get some sleep soon, I’m going to be a hysterical psychiatrist, which tends to make the patients nervous.”
    He was about to turn over again when her voice stopped him. “Do you want to make love?”
    “Now? It’s one o’clock in the morning.”
    “I didn’t ask you what time it was. God knows, I know what time it is. You’ve told me enough times. I asked you if you wanted to make love.”
    “You are the most infuriating woman,” he began, buthe was already pulling her toward him, edging one knee across her ample thigh.
    There was a knock on their bedroom door. “Daddy?” the voice called tentatively.
    Renee withdrew her arms, which had been about to encircle her husband’s still slender waistline. They fell back against her pillow as if there were heavy weights attached to her wrists. She felt Philip immediately pull away, felt him sitting up and straining through the darkness as the pajama-clad figure of Debbie, his teenage daughter, inched toward them.
    “Baby?” he asked, his voice so gentle that Renee felt momentarily displaced, as if she’d somehow wandered into the wrong bed. “Is something the matter, darling? Why aren’t you asleep?”
    “I had a bad dream,” the voice quivered, and for an instant Renee was tempted to draw the frightened girl in beside her and hold her and comfort her and tell her that everything would be all right. Until she saw the little half-smirk that the girl was still too much of a child to completely hide, and she froze. Even in the darkness, Renee could make out the fierce determination in her husband’s daughter’s eyes.
    “Do you want to tell me about it?” asked the man who only minutes ago had told Renee that office hours were from eight till four.
    “It was a terrible dream,” the girl, who was sixteen and looked fourteen, told her father, allowing her shivering frame to be surrounded by his bare arms. “I dreamt that you were in a car accident, you and Renée.”
    As she always did, Debbie pronounced the double e of Renee’s name as if it were French. (“It’s Renee, rhymeswith beanie,” Renee corrected her every year when the girl arrived from Boston to spend the summer with them, as she had reminded her when Debbie arrived two weeks before. “Renee,