The Angry Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

possibly been there fifteen years. In one of the drawers I found three Caruso records and recalled my father’s admiration for the Italian singer.
    I covered the room. Nothing.
    I decided to search the house, and spent two hours at it, from attic to cellar. There was nothing but books, kitchen utensils, and furniture. Not even an old newspaper stack in the cellar, not a paper bag, not a forgotten grocery list, and the attic looked incongruous. Everything neat, yet nothing to remember him by. Nothing to recall my mother, either.
    I had avoided my old room. I needn’t have. It evoked nothing of the past—the bare bed, the old bureau, an empty closet and an old oil painting that my mother had done when I was ten of a Spanish galleon sailing heavy seas.
    I brought my bags into the house from the car, opened the one with the whisky inside, and poured a water glass full. I drank it neat, chased it with well-water, got cigarettes and started walking through the cold afternoon toward the far hill.
    I couldn’t get Herb Spash out of my mind. He hadn’t shown animosity; he had wanted to tell me something.
    “Al.”
    “Yes.”
    We stood there in the doorway and looked at each other. I didn’t really see her—I saw memory. It was a very bright memory for the moment. I had walked to the ornate, wrought-iron door and worked the black knocker, disturbed slightly with the changes around the Gunther place. It was no longer just a hill farm, as I had remembered. There was something about it of idleness and rich discontent. Trimmed box hedges meandered about the grounds enclosing graveled drives. It was horsy, the paddocks in sight and far beyond, where corn and wheat and alfalfa used to grow, the fields lay fallow.
    “There’s no one home but me, Al.”
    “All right, I’ll come in then.”
    I followed her through a vestibule that I did not recall, and into a hall. She swung the heavy mahogany and glass door shut, and immediately this was no longer a farm. It hadn’t been outside, either—that’s what had bothered me. Quiet jazz filtered through the house from somewhere.
    “It’s good to see you,” she said. “I heard you were in town.”
    I didn’t know what to say. It was like approaching somebody you knew very well you knew, then discovering after the first loud blunder that you’d never seen the person before in your life.
    “I thought I’d better–”
    “I’m glad you did, Al.”
    She wore a soft dark skirt, a thin white blouse slashed deeply at the throat, the collar broad and flaring, and a tan Cashmere sweater. The sweater was open, yet it clung to her body. The hair was richer, darker, more luxurious, and heavy to her shoulders, curling on the soft weave of the sweater. Her face was pale, her lips dark and full, her eyes still darker than I remembered, and boldly staring. The smile was the same. And the body of this woman was full-blown now. She turned lazily and walked away from me.
    “Let’s not stand in the hall, Al.”
    I followed her, the trimly stockinged calves, the low white leather moccasins. It was a careless walk, her body active. The back of the sweater rode across her fine hips as she moved slowly down three fieldstone steps that hadn’t been here before, into a sunken room of heavy drapes, thick carpeting and music.
    She walked over to a large window looking out from the side of the house into the failing afternoon. There was a broad couch beneath the window, and slightly to one side.
    “Would you like a drink, Al?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “Sit down.”
    I sat on the couch, glanced up at her, then away. Somehow I couldn’t look at her without wanting to stare. She stood looking out the window. Light snow began to fall out there.
    “Why did you come back?” she said.
    I tried to tell her. It came out a jumbled mass. She had changed, yet she had not changed. “I didn’t expect you to be still living here, Lois.”
    “I didn’t expect that, either. But I’m still here.”
    She had not