Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

panties, in it. He’d told her she needn’t bring a nightgown. She had though, because the backpack felt ridiculously light and flat without the flannel nightgown as filler. Besides, he’d liked to peel the old-fashioned thing off her. He’d also liked to dive underneath it and rest his face between her thighs.
    Ah, she thought. Placing the memory at her feet.
    Do you realize, she said to him, that I have lived with you for nine years. That I have carried in my body two of your children. That I have cooked thousands of breakfasts and lunches and dinners for you. That I have sat up with you when you’ve been sick. That I have helped you care for your parents. That I have shared my body with you whenever you wanted it, whether I felt like it or not? Do you realize . . .
    But he had already raised his hand to strike her again.
    She was wearing a bright pink scarf around her neck. She began to take it off, very slowly. Another couple was coming up the path. The man chubby and talking loudly; the woman slender and a bit stooped. She seemed to be carrying the backpack for both of them, while the man carried a notebook into which he seemed to be making notations. He nearly fell as he passed them, and they hastened, both of them, to set him aright. She looked at her husband and wanted to smile; she thought this action would amuse them both. On his part the movement was simply reflex. His anger was unabated. She gazed into his face, a face she had seen go through innumerable changes. His face changed so much! In passion it was one way; in horror, another. In joy he became flushed as a boy. In grief, his features had seemed to dissolve and a grayness crept over him.
    It wasn’t that she’d never seen him so angry. She’d never seen him so angry with her.
    He was angry enough to kill.
    The precipice to their right now seemed ominous. Far below they heard the sound of water dashing against rocks. She felt her kinship with all women who have, against their husband’s will, initiated divorce. Some made it; she knew. Thousands upon thousands, and, over time, millions upon millions, did not. She said a brief prayer for them.
    Do you realize, she continued, the pink scarf now held loosely in both hands, that I have done all of those things, and more, with and for you. And yet, at the moment I tell you I must have time alone to be with myself, you strike out at me. Would you call this love?
    Though she was crying, she talked through the tears as if they weren’t there. Her voice was calm, almost serene, though her heart was beating fast.
    His face was like a storm moving in slow motion. It seemed to spread, the cloud that was his face, to cover all the space around them and then to blot out the sky. He was clenching his teeth and his hands were in fists.
    She moved closer to the edge of the ledge that jutted out, creating a shallow overhang. She peered cautiously over the side.
    Here, she said, pushing the scarf into his hands. You could strangle me and kick me over the edge. They wouldn’t find my body for months and then it wouldn’t surface near here. I’d be far downstream in no time. You’d be in the clear. I won’t, she said calmly, live in fear of you.
    She watched his face coalesce once more into the face she knew. He seemed to come back into himself.
    You bitch, he said.
    Why, because I want to be on my own?
    He flung down the scarf, turned, and fled back down the trail.
    When she returned to the parking lot shortly afterward he and the trusty Dodge were gone. She had trail mix in her backpack, a bottle of water, and half a box of raisins, but no money, no credit card, no driver’s license. She was a hundred miles from home.
    Her favorite Marlon Brando story came to her: He’d been on a talk show trying to endure it, she felt, and the host had asked him why he hadn’t made it to a particular Hollywood party. Marlon said he’d tried to make it but that as he was crossing the desert his car broke down. He found himself