Read Online The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller - Free Book Online Page A

work shirt, and slacks. No tie. His hair was wild. He set the bags down on the door. “Wow!” he said, looking around.
    “What do you think?” she said.
    “Thank
you,
is what I think.” He grabbed her, kissed her. “You must have been at it nonstop, all day.” He kept his arm over her shoulders, around her neck.
    “It was nothing,” she said lightly. She leaned her head against his. His cheek was slightly bristly after his long day. After a moment, she stepped away from him, out of his embrace. “Tell me what you got us for dinner. I am
starving.
”
    “A big salad.” He stopped her and rubbed at something on her cheek. “My, you're a dirty girl.”
    “Newsprint, I bet,” she volunteered, holding her face still for him. “It got all over me.”
    When he was done, she moved backward, pulling him along with her. She scooted herself up on the door counter, her face level with his. She wrapped her legs around him. She rested her elbows on his shoulders. “How was your day?” she asked. Then she pitched her voice higher and made it singsong. “How was school, honey?”
    And so he began—the computer meeting, the library meeting, the departmental meeting. After a few minutes, she got down and began to go through the grocery bags, setting things out. Beer. She held a bottle up.
    “Yes, thanks,” he said.
    She got a church key from one of the bureau drawers and opened two of the bottles. She handed one to him and took a long swig herself of the bitter, fizzy stuff. She was thirsty. She hadn't drunk anything since the coffee that morning.
    She was really only half listening to Nathan, thinking more about how surprised he would be when she told him about the job at the radio station.
I've got a secret,
she thought.
    He had moved on to an account of lunch with the dean. She made him a cracker with pâté, and had another one herself.
    He'd taken her place on the door by now, boosting himself onto it, his legs dangling. His jacket was off and he'd rolled his sleeves up. She loved his arms. His arms, and his hands—so surprisingly long-fingered and delicate for a man his size.
    He described the motley collection of furniture in his office. He said he'd gone over to the college gym to check out the pool hours—he was a swimmer, with a swimmer's graceful, strong body. He told her about the colleague across the hall, and the joke this guy had told him.
    “A joke already!” Meri said. “What a good sign!” She'd started to eat grapes from the second grocery bag.
    “Well, I don't know,” he said. “It was a dirty joke. Is that a good sign? I mean, isn't it too soon to tell a guy you don't even know a dirty joke?”
    “I don't know either,” she said. “But then I've never understood any of the rules for guys.” She had another grape. “Was it a good dirty joke?”
    “So-so.” He slid sideways, closer to the grocery bags. He began to eat the grapes too.
    “These aren't washed, you know,” Meri said.
    “I know.”
    “Aren't you worried that we'll suddenly break out in some horrible scabrous rash? That we'll develop uncontrollable facial tics?” She blinked one eye rapidly, jerking her head along with it.
    “I think there's some danger that our children will,” he said.
    She had another swallow of beer. “The hell with them,” she said. “They're such brats.”
    “But they're such
interesting
brats. So intelligent. So gifted.”
    Meri snorted. She tore off a long stem dangling with grapes and handed it to him. “Now it's your turn, buddy,” she said.
    “My turn for what?”
    “Your turn to say, ‘How was
your
day, sweetheart?’”
    “And? How was it? Aside from being productive.” He waved his hand to include all she'd accomplished.
    “It was really, really, really productive. In that”—she danced away from him, jumped and landed, spreading her arms wide—“ta da! I got a job.”
    “What job?” She enjoyed watching his face move from puzzlement to surprise. “The radio job?”
    She