Read Online In Pharaoh's Army by Tobias Wolff - Free Book Online Page A

the Chesapeake Bay Bridge late one night. It was hot in the car, and I asked Vera to crack the window. She looked at me curiously. I asked her again.
What?
she said.
Crack the window?
Please, I said. She screamed
Here!
and struck the windshield with the heel of her hand. She did it again, and again, as hard as she could.
Here! Here!
I grabbed her wrist so she wouldn’t hurt herself and asked what I’d done wrong.
You know
, she said. She stared ahead, hugging herself. Finally she declared she’d never in her life heard the expression “crack the window,” and said further that I
knew
she’d never heard it. Why, she asked, did I like to mock her? Exactly what pleasure did it give me?
    I thought it best not to answer, but my silencegoaded her to fury, and the injured sound of her own voice served as proof that I had wronged her, that I was vicious, disloyal, unworthy, hateful. Vera was still going strong when we got to my place. She hadn’t moved in with me yet; that opera had yet to open. My friends and I lived in a black neighborhood where people didn’t observe the white protocol of seeming not to hear what was going on around them. I tried to hush Vera but she was in full cry, and before long our neighbors joined in, yelling at us from up and down the street. They were inspirational to Vera but not to me. I told her she had to go home, and when she refused I simply got out of my car and went inside.
    It was well after midnight. My friends were in their rooms, gallantly pretending to be asleep. I opened a beer and carried it to the living room.
    The first crash wasn’t that loud. It sounded like someone had kicked over a garbage can. The second was louder. I went to the window and parted the blinds. Vera was backing down the street in her mother’s old Mercedes. This was a blocky gray diesel made, no doubt, from melted-down panzers. Vera went about fifty feet, stopped, ground the gears, started up the street again and rammed my car head-on, caving in the hood. Her undercarriage got caught on my bumper as she pulled away. She couldn’t move but kept trying anyhow, racing the engine, rending metal. Then she popped the clutch and the engine died.
    “I’m going to kill you,” I told her when I reached the street.
    I must have looked like I meant it, because she locked her door and sat there without saying a word. I walked back and forth around my car, a yellow Volkswegenbug, the first car I’d ever owned. It was cherry when I bought it. An unusual word to use about a VW, but that’s what the ad said: “Cherry, needs tires, runs good.” Gospel, every word. It was a good car but a soft car, no match for the armor-plated
Überauto
now parked on its hood. Before landing there Vera had nailed the bug twice on the driver’s side, caving in the door and breaking the window.
    I kept circling it. As I walked I began to tote up the damage, translating it into words that offered some hope of amendment.
Crumpled fender. Dents on door panel
. A phrase came to mind that I tried to dismiss and forget, because the instant I thought of it I knew it would undo me.
Cracked window
. I sat down on the curb. Vera got out of her car. She walked over, sat beside me, leaned against my shoulder.
    “You cracked the window,” I said. “I’ll think twice before I ask you to do that again.” And we sat there laughing at my ruined car.
    This sort of thing became routine, all in a day’s work. At first I was able to see Vera’s fits as aristocratic peculiarity, and even managed to believe that I could somehow deliver her from them and help her become as squared away as I was. After all, she looked as solid as a rock compared to her brother Grisha.
    I never actually met Grisha. Just before I started going out with Vera he had quarreled with their mother over something so trivial she couldn’t remember it afterward, except that she had said something about not liking the look on his face, whereupon Grisha declared that he wouldn’t