Revolutionary Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

every little half-assed—what'd you say?" He glanced briefly away from the road and was startled to see, by the light of the dashboard, that she was covering her face with both hands.
      "I said yes. All right, Frank. Could you just please stop talking now, before you drive me crazy?"
      He slowed down quickly and brought the car to a sandy halt on the shoulder of the road, cutting the engine and the lights. Then he slid across the seat and tried to take her in his arms.
      "No, Frank, please don't do that. Just leave me alone, okay?"
    "Baby, it's only that I want to—"
    "Leave me alone. Leave me alone !"
      He drew himself back to the wheel and put the lights on, but his hands refused to undertake the job of starting the car. Instead he sat there for a minute, listening to the beating of blood in his eardrums.
      "It strikes me," he said at last, "that there's a considerable amount of bullshit going on here. I mean you seem to be doing a pretty good imitation of Madame Bovary here, and there's one or two points I'd like to clear up. Number one, it's not my fault the play was lousy. Number two, it's sure as hell not my fault you didn't turn out to be an actress, and the sooner you get over that little piece of soap opera the better off we're all going to be. Number three, I don't happen to fit the role of dumb, insensitive suburban husband; you've been trying to hang that one on me ever since we moved out here, and I'm damned if I'll wear it. Number four—"
      She was out of the car and running away in the headlights, quick and graceful, a little too wide in the hips. For a second, as he clambered out and started after her, he thought she meant to kill herself—she was capable of damn near anything at times like this—but she stopped in the dark roadside weeds thirty yards ahead, beside a luminous sign that read no passing. He came up behind her and stood uncertainly, breathing hard, keeping his distance. She wasn't crying; she was only standing there, with her back to him.
      "What the hell," he said. "What the hell's this all about? Come on back to the car."
      "No. I will in a minute. Just let me stand here a minute, all right?"
      His arms flapped and fell; then, as the sound and the lights of an approaching car came up behind them, he put one hand in his pocket and assumed a conversational slouch for the sake of appearances. The car overtook them, lighting up the sign and the tense shape of her back; then its taillights sped away and the drone of its tires flattened out to a buzz in the distance, and finally to silence. On their right, in a black marsh, the spring peepers were in full and desperate song. Straight ahead, two or three hundred yards away, the earth rose high above the moonlit telephone wires to form the mound of Revolutionary Hill, along whose summit winked the friendly picture windows of the Revolutionary Hill Estates. The Campbells lived in one of those houses; the Campbells might well be in one of the cars whose lights were coming up behind them right now.
      "April?"
      She didn't answer.
      "Look," he said. "Couldn't we sit in the car and talk about it? Instead of running all over Route Twelve?"
      "Haven't I made it clear," she said, "that I don't particularly want to talk about it?"
       "Okay," he said. " Okay. Jesus, April, I'm trying as hard as I can to be nice about this thing, but I—"
      "How kind of you," she said. "How terribly, terribly kind of you."
      "W ait a minute—" he pulled the hand from his pocket and stood straight, but then he put it back because other cars were coming. "Listen a minute." He tried to swallow but his throat was very dry. "I don't know what you're trying to prove here," he said, "and frankly I don't think you do either. But I do know one thing. I know damn well I don't deserve this."
      "You're always so wonderfully definite, aren't you," she said, "on the subject of what you do and don't deserve." She swept past him and walked