Read Online Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson - Free Book Online Page A

toward the rear and seat themselves about four rows back on the other side of the aisle.
    Matthew is kneeling on his seat, intent on getting a better view of his old friend.
    She tugs at the back of his belt. “Sit down, Matthew!”
    â€œMom, can I go and sit with Conrad?”
    â€œNo!”
    She is trying to superimpose her image of Roberta upon the person she has just seen, although she knows it will not fit. It is not Roberta Conrad is with, but someone whose existence she has not even suspected. Perhaps Roberta herself does not exist in Conrad’s life to the extent that she has been led to believe. She wonders how many different women there are. How many, Conrad? Is this the woman he sees on Sundays?
    She is feeling dizzy. It is the close air, the slow, lurching movements of the bus. More people get on at Broadway, filling the empty seats, standing in the aisle next to her, above her. A stranger’s belly presses against her shoulder. Finally she makes herself look behind her just once to where Conrad is absorbed in conversation with the other woman just as if she, Molly, is no more than any other passenger. His eyes wander in her direction for an instant, but it is not as though he sees her.
    The bus stops at Lincoln Center and still more people pile on. They are all on top of each other, hanging from every strap. Where are they going? It is somehow indecent that they all must be contained like this in the same container—she and Conrad and …
    The bus is moving forward again and she is suddenly standing, pulling on the cord, signalling she wants to get off. She grabs Matthew’s hand and pushes through the bodies crowded near the front door, yanking him behind her. “But I thought we were going to the zoo!” he is wailing in rage and astonishment.
    She doesn’t have a plan. They will get there somehow, they will walk, take a taxi. They will end up going home. She cannot see herself looking at animals, at anything. “Excuse me,” she is saying, “excuse me,” breaking through to the door with her elbows, Matthew in tears as they exit.
    â€œBut I want to go to the zoo!”
    They are standing on the pavement as the bus pulls away and she catches a glimpse of Conrad looking out at her behind glass, his red hair, his large stunned face.
    It turns out later that she has jumped to conclusions again. The young woman she saw was “only Stephanie,” a friend Conrad had neglected to mention to her—a former lover, but now more of a sister, a confidante. Some of his best friends are ex-lovers. He was upset by her conduct on the bus, her coldness. That was why he had not lingered or introduced Stephanie to her. “I think you have a propensity toward jealousy,” he says. She has suffered for nothing.
    I went to bed with my ex-husband on my birthday. Maybe because it was my birthday, maybe because it was another Saturday night that Conrad was spending with Roberta. Maybe because I was slightly depressed. Most of all, I suppose, I was curious. Who knows why you do certain dumb things? I do not discount curiosity as a factor. I was curious about what it would be like to go to bed with Fred when he was feeling attracted to me—and he was attracted now that he was past his initial territorial fury. Somehow the fact that I was desired by another had made me a desirable object in his eyes as well. At any rate, divorce clearly agreed with him. He came up to see Matthew that Saturday afternoon, took both of us out to dinner and resembled his old premarital self so much that I ended up sleeping with him accidentally, more by default than intention.
    Later I asked myself whether we might have been making some unconscious effort toward reconciliation. But I don’t think it was that. It was what it was—an act occurring in a sort of moral vacuum, to which it would be a mistake to ascribe too much meaning. Afterward we parted amicably, our mutual curiosity