Secrets & Surprises Read Online Free PDF Page B

because he wanted to move to Los Angeles and she said she was staying in New York. She said it assuming at once that he would go anyhow. When he made it clear that he would not leave without her, she started to cry because she was so grateful that he was staying. He thought she was crying because he had yelled at her and said that she had no interest in his career. He took back what he had said; he told her that she was very tolerant and that she often gave good advice. She had a good ear, even if she didn’t express her opinions in complex technical terms. She cried again, and this time even she did not realize at first why. Later she knew that it was because he had never said so many kind things to her at once. Actually, very few people in her life had ever gone out of their way to say something kind, and it had just been too much. She began to wonder if her nerves were getting bad. Once, she woke up in the night disoriented and sweating, having dreamed that she was out in the sun, with all her energy gone. It was stifling hot and she couldn’t move. “The sun’s a good thing,” he said to her when she told him the dream. “Think about the bright beautiful sun in Los Angeles. Think about stretching out on a warm day with a warm breeze.” Trembling, she left him and went into the kitchen for water. He did not know that if he had really set out for California, she would have followed.
    In June, when the air pollution got very bad and the air carried the smell that sidewalks get when they are baked through every day, he began to complain that it was her fault that they were in New York and not in California. “But I just don’t like that way of life,” she said. “If I went there, I wouldn’t be happy.”
    “What’s so appealing about this uptight New York scene?” he said. “You wake up in the night in a sweat. You won’t even walk through Washington Square Park anymore.”
    “It’s because of that man with the crutches,” she said. “People like that. I told you it was only because of him.”
    “So let’s get away from all that. Let’s go somewhere.”
    “You think there aren’t people like that in California?” she said.
    “It doesn’t matter what I think about California if I’m not going.” He clamped earphones on his head.
    That same month, while she and Jack and Gus were sharing a pot of cheese fondue, she found out that Jack had a wife. They were at Gus’s apartment when Gus casually said something about Myra. “Who’s Myra?” she asked, and he said, “You know—Jack’s wife, Myra.” It seemed unreal to her—even more so because Gus’s apartment was such an odd place; that night Gus had plugged a defective lamp into an outlet and blown out a fuse. Then he plugged in his only other lamp, which was a sunlamp. It glowed so brightly that he had to turn it, in its wire enclosure, to face the wall. As they sat on the floor eating, their three shadows were thrown up against the opposite wall. She had been looking at that—detached, the way you would stand back to appreciate a picture—when she tuned in on the conversation and heard them talking about someone named Myra.
    “You didn’t know?” Gus said to her. “Okay, I want you both out. I don’t want any heavy scene in my place. I couldn’t take it. Come on—I really mean it. I want you out. Please don’t talk about it here.”
    On the street, walking beside Jack, it occurred to her that Gus’s outburst was very strange, almost as strange as Jack’s not telling her about his wife.
    “I didn’t see what would be gained by telling you,” Jack said.
    They crossed the street. They passed the Riviera Café. She had once counted the number of panes of glass across the Riviera’s front.
    “Did you ever think about us getting married?” he said. “I thought about it. I thought that if you didn’t want to follow me to California, of course you wouldn’t want to marry me.”
    “You’re already married,” she said. She