Lost in the Forest Read Online Free PDF Page B

watch the fire, then getting up to put another log on, he conveys a sense of inheld power in everything he does that makes him beautiful.
    Maybe she’s forgiven him for that, she thinks.
    They’ve lowered their voices slightly to talk about the children. They talk about Emily, about how pleased they are that she’s been accepted at Wesleyan, how good it will be for her to be away from the family. They agree again that she has to learn to relax, to let herself be funny, which happens from time to time. They both try to call up funny-Emily stories, and can’t, which makes them laugh. “There you have it,” she says.
    And now they move on, feeling generous to each other, expansive. He tells her about his work, about his crew members, about their idiosyncrasies, their jokes. She tells him about a reading series she’s arranging. They talk about the shade of blue in the dining room, which she wants to change. “The problem is I can’t stand the names.”
    “The names?”
    “The paint names. Who thinks them up?”
    “Ignore them. They’re just words.”
    “I can’t. I can’t ignore them. Words count. If I had a dining room named seafoam , I’d think of it every time I stepped in.”
    He grins. “And you’d feel …?”
    She shrugs and laughs. “Wet, I guess.”
    All of this is easy and comfortable, as it hadn’t been in the years before she married John, when she was still so angry with Mark she didn’t like to stay in the same room with him if the children weren’t there. She thinks of this, this newly companionable relationship with her ex-husband, as another gift John has given her.
    Mark is talking now about how the overgrown land behind his house has been cleared for a vineyard by his neighbor, affording him a startling new view of the mountain. They both speak of the skyrocketing real estate prices in the valley, of how grateful they are to have bought when they did.
    And now she’s suddenly talking about Theo, the child who doesn’t even belong to Mark. She has felt the impulse growing in herself, and in her ease with him this evening, she gives over to it. She explains about the trouble Theo’s been having in day care, about how he apparently can’t seem to stay long with any one activity. Sometimes he gets angry, he has a tantrum—his caregiver has to give him a time-out , an expression Eva detests, and can’t say without a mocking emphasis. She tells Mark she thinks this is related to John’s death, to Theo’s not accepting John’s death. “He never speaks of it,” she says.
    “Well, it was pretty awful. He probably doesn’t like to think of it.”
    “But don’t you think he needs somehow—I don’t know—to confront it? I know that sounds like psychobabble, but I think … I can’t help feeling he doesn’t really believe John is dead. And it can’t be good for him to hang on to that fantasy.”
    Mark doesn’t answer for a minute. She can’t tell what he might be thinking. He’s turned away, looking at the fire. But now he looks over at her and smiles. “I’m sure he’ll be all right, Eva. I know he will.” Somehow, for no good reason, this reassures her, her spirits feel lighter.
    When they go back into the kitchen so Eva can pull the meal together, the kids hear them and come downstairs, and there’s the pleasant sense of milling around that has happened only occasionally since John’s death. Mark is showing Theo a trick where theyhold hands and the little boy walks up Mark’s body until Mark flips him over. Emily is talking to Eva about the college catalogue she’s gotten in the mail from Wesleyan, and one of the courses she’s thinking of taking next year—and Daisy is sitting on the counter, listening. Emily stands next to Eva while she talks, more or less leaning on her. Eva finds this odd, this impulse to physical proximity. She can’t imagine having wanted such a thing from her own mother. But when Emily talks to Eva, she often touches her, idly rearranging