The Longest Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

her arms. “Where should I put this?” she asked.
    Mitch looked at it. “What do we have here?” he asked jovially, as if to a child.
    “It’s a meatloaf.”
    “How nice of you to bring something,” Jeannie said. “Let’s go set it down.”
    Nat followed her to the kitchen and paused. Jeannie saw her take in the smorgasbord on the countertops—a foil-covered platter of roast and carrots, tomato aspic, red Jell-O salad studded with marshmallows and pretzel bits like an ocean after a shark-thronged shipwreck—all in Jeannie’s matching orange Pyrex.
    “Oh,” Nat said, “I thought we were supposed to bring something.”
    Jeannie smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, gesturing for Nat to set her burden on the counter. Nat nudged aside a bowl and shifted the platter heavily down. For a moment both women studied the oily, olive-studded brown loaf.
    “I was sure I’d read it was a potluck,” Nat said. “I’m so embarrassed.”
    Jeannie laid one manicured hand on her arm and caught Nat glancing at it. “It’s always nice to have variety. Come, let’s meet all the wives.” She led Nat around the wet bar, past the knee-high stone panther Mitch had brought back from Korea, to the couch and love seat where the women had congregated.
    “This is Nat Collier,” Jeannie said. She stepped back, fingers linked at waist level.
    “She looks like June Carter!” Minnie Harbaugh pealed.
    Jeannie could see the resemblance: It was Nat’s dark hair and open expression, pretty but slightly toothy mouth; the almost playful tomboyish figure she cut in her belted shirtdress.
    “Well, I sure wish I could sing,” Nat said.
    The wives were curious about Nat: Where had she moved from, when did she get to Idaho Falls, would she be having more children? This last question was asked right out of the gate and left Nat stammering a bit, but it was fair game, after all, as they were women and their business was babies.
    Nat said she was happy, for now, with her two.
    “I’m finished at three,” Patty confessed, and the other women let out a near hiss of disappointment.
    “I have four,” said Brownie, “but if God let me I’d have a million!”
    In such conversations, Jeannie was always passed over (her one, late child hinting at years of resentment or a sexless marriage, neither of which encouraged inquiry) as was Kath Enzinger (who was just strange). Resentment was, indeed, a large part of Jeannie’s personal history: It had taken her sixteen years to become pregnant with Angela. By that time she had bitterly mourned and resigned herself to a life without children, throwing herself into wives’ committees and charity work. Then one winter evening, having enjoyed a six-course meal with some friends and plenty of vino to wash it down, she came home and vomited the night away while Mitch slept on the couch. Eight months later Angela came to join them: a chunky black-haired babe who sucked her left thumb until it resembled the striated landscape of a fictional planet. Jeannie loved her in a puzzled sort of way; sometimes she feared she’d so desired a child that she’d used up all her passion on the wanting. And her mind, long accustomed to envy, still blazed at pregnant women, women with prams full of babies, women with twins, women with toddlers tumbling out of their shopping carts, all this fecundity where she had been so silent. Wanting something that badly for that long had turned an odd key in her, and she felt that she might never be entirely normal.
    She cleared her throat. “Do you have any hobbies, Nat?”
    “
Besides
having children?” Nat laughed. “Well, not really.” She thought a moment, then brightened. “Oh, I like the beach. I used to enjoy hiking. Does that count?”
    “Have you met many other wives yet?” This from Patty.
    “Not really,” Nat said. “I don’t get out a lot with the girls so small.” She looked down at her drink with a shy, bobbing nod, and Jeannie wondered if this