Read Online The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller - Free Book Online

then."
    "I don't believe you."
    "You should."
    She sighed. She looked away. Then back at him. She said, "Just answer me one question."
    He shifted on the couch, impatient, not looking at her.
    "Gabriel? Just one."
    "All right," he said.
    "Tell me honestly. When you heard, didn't you feel any sense of ..." She stopped. After a moment, she shook her head. "Forget it."
    "Joy? Possibility? I felt that. A sense of release. Is that what you're asking?"
    She nodded.
    "Of course. Of course I did. Instantly. 'It's over. She's gone.'"
    He stood up and started walking toward the back of the stage. "'I'm out of it. I'm out of it without hurting her. I can be bereaved: Oh, it's so terrible, what happened to Gabriel. Did you hear? Oh, poor Gabriel. Poor man .' All of that." He made a fist and struck the frame of the window. Anita started. She looked frightened for a moment.
    "While my son was here, telling me what an awful, unfeeling person I am, I was being that person. That unfeeling. No. Worse than unfeeling: that calculating a person. And I'll have to live with that. That that is what I am, who I am. That I was, at least for a moment, glad that Elizabeth--a person I used to love better than I loved myself, a person I still care for and respect--glad that she wouldn't be around anymore." He laughed, horribly. "The first stage of grief: 'Oh, goody.' "
    "Gabriel. It's only human. To want ... to ..."
    "Anita, please, don't. Don't ... excuse me. Don't forgive me. You need to, to want to go on. But that doesn't help me, don't you see? It doesn't matter to me, honestly. Your forgiveness. It's of a piece with my own greed for ... freedom. A new life."
    "It's not greed, what I feel."
    "It's what we all feel. We want. Then we want more. It's the human condition. And when we stop wanting, we feel dead and we want to want again."
    "But that's what you said you felt with Elizabeth. Dead."
    "Yes."
    "And with me, you felt alive again. You said so."
    "Yes. But it was wanting. Wanting what I didn't have."
    "Me!" she cried.
    He came forward again, not looking at her. She was waiting. Finally he did turn to her. His face was sad, kind. "Ah, well," he said.
    "Me!" she said, with anger this time.
    "The idea of you anyway, Anita." And then, compassionately, "Anita."
    "Don't say my name! Don't say my name that way."
    "I can't help it. It's the way I feel your name now."
    She sat very still for a long moment. Then she said in a small voice, "You're letting me go, aren't you?"
    "How can I keep you?" His voice was strained, but gentle.
    "Why can't you keep me?"
    "Because I want Elizabeth. I want Elizabeth to be alive."
    "It's not a deal. An exchange. It doesn't have to be one or the other." He didn't answer. "You said you wanted to end it. You wanted to be free."
    "I can't be free unless she sets me free."
    "But if she's dead ..."
    He moaned, loudly, and turned to face her. "If she's dead, then I'm Gabriel, the widower. That's who I am. That's who I'll be. I have to ... enact that, for her. I have to honor her. I can't be free. I can't be glad. She was my wife. She is my wife."
    "And if she's alive?"
    "If she's alive, I'm glad for her life. I have to be glad for her life. I have to be a person who is glad ... that she's alive. I will be glad she's alive." He sat down again, but in one of the chairs this time. Not near her. "I can't be ... that other person. The person Alex thinks I am."
    "This is ridiculous," she said suddenly, angrily. "This is like fucking Henry James."
    A sad little smile moved on his face. "I don't think you'd have much of a chance at that." A few people laughed.
    "It's not funny, Gabriel."
    He looked exhausted all at once. "No. It's not. Really."
    She watched him. Then she said, "And what about me?"
    He shook his head. "I'm sorry."
    "But you said you loved me."
    "I'm sorry, Anita. I am sorry. But the terms have shifted. You see that, don't you? Everything has changed. My life. Life itself."
    "But you said you wanted me."
    "I wanted