Read Online I Want to Show You More (9780802193742) by Jamie Quatro - Free Book Online Page A

underwear; her bangs were sweaty and she was crying. Neil walked up onto the grass and pulled the nightgown loose. He lifted her; through the thin fabric he felt the heat in her armpits.
    He kissed her forehead. “You’ve got a fever, Eff.”
    â€œI looked for Motrin,” Myra said, “but we don’t have any.”
    â€œI’m sure Grandpa’s got some,” Neil said.
    â€œWant me to walk down and ask?”
    â€œThat’s okay, I’ll go. Would you stay with Effie?”
    Effie lifted her head off his shoulder. “But I want you .”
    It was only a breath, the smallest puff of hot air on his cheek. But it was there. The long hallway, the door swinging out onto the whirling planet. How strange, he thought, that his daughter’s words could reveal such a thing. He felt the invisible machinery inside him stir.
    Effie burrowed her face into his shoulder.
    He should have jumped into the lake with his children that afternoon. He should have shown them, here, that everything was going to be okay. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow he would pull them in, give them rides on his back. Over and over he would dive deep, come up underneath them, tickle their feet. Allow himself to be thrilled by the reach of their fingertips, the brush of their soles.

What Friends Talk About
    Weekday mornings, after she takes the children to school, she drives to the local grocery and sits out on the covered second-floor balcony. This is where she goes to call the other man, though some days he calls her first. Below the balcony is a parking lot, car tops pulling in and out, train whistles from the rail line a half-mile beyond the row of Bartlett pears bordering the shopping center. In the spring, when the affair has ended, the trees will flare out in a lacy white bloom. Look at the bride trees, her youngest daughter will say, gazing through the backseat window.
    In tiny print, on receipts and the insides of book covers, she makes lists of things she wants to ask or tell the other man while she sits at the table above the parking lot. She writes down things her children say— Does the Mississippi dump into the Atlantic or Specific? When I’m at school my stuffed animals stay home and do very quiet things. Got my braces tightened today so I can only eat Pure Aid food, ugh!— her oldest daughter’s Facebook status. She tells him about her husband’s trip to Singapore, the hand-strung black pearls he brought home for her birthday: thirty-seven pearls, each tinged an iridescent purple-blue.
    The other man tells her about his wife, how she’s training for a triathlon and got a new haircut, short and spiked. How he misses it long and silky down her back.
    Don’t ever cut your hair, he says.
    She knows the man doesn’t like it when she talks about her husband and children. He knows she doesn’t like it when he talks about his wife. But these are the things friends talk about.
    Later, when they’ve finished with talk of spouses and children and the vagaries of their daily lives, he will read poetry to her. Linda Gregg, Jack Gilbert, Sharon Olds. He’ll ask her to read certain passages aloud for him, and she’ll record them on the computer, then send them as MP3s. He will e-mail long passages from books on quantum physics and New Age spirituality; she will e-mail passages from C. S. Lewis and the Psalms. They’ll talk about these things, too. And when they’ve finished with poetry and science and God, and the pauses between their sentences grow longer, she will leave the table and walk down the stairs past the sushi bar and deli and greeting cards and potted orchids near the store’s entrance. She will get into her car.
    Today it’s raining, hard. Even at top speed the wipers can’t keep up. Overnight, in Chattanooga, the rain will turn to sleet; on the mountain, where the woman lives, snow.
    I’m driving home now, she says.
    He draws a breath.
    If our