Read Online The Women by T. C. Boyle - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: T. C. Boyle
Tags: Fiction
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housewife and goggling rube staring at her as if she had the letter A sewed to the front of her dress. Of course she’d left him. But that didn’t mean she didn’t love him still.
Before she knew what she was doing she’d balled the summons in her fist and she was tearing it to pieces and flinging those pieces—sad defeated little flakes of paper like shed skin—into the flowerbed. She was in the house next, not the main house but the bungalow out back, and she had a lamp in her hand—Leora’s lamp, a hand-me-down, rubbish from the rubbish shop, no antique—and she was methodically beating it against the white plaster wall. Which was crumbling, right there before her, in an accumulating avalanche of white powder.
It was Leora who discovered her—she must have been crying out, the Chinese popping his head in the door like a jack-in-the-box and in the next moment Leora rushing into the room and calling out her name over and over, as if to remind her who she was, to bring her back, and it was as if she’d been transported out of her body, her mind flying off to cling to some hidden perch and her muscles working all on their own. The lamp was of brass. It clanged and clanged till it was a bell tolling for the dead, Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! She remembered Leora throwing her arms around her—restraining her—and Leora’s emollient voice pouring like syrup into her ear. And then they were on the couch together, the Chinese hurrying off to mix a shaker of martinis because this was an emergency, that much was clear—the lamp destroyed, the wall rutted and gouged and blood spattered there too and Miriam with her skinned knuckles and the straps of her swimming costume slipped down her shoulders and the wrap come loose so that her breasts swung free—but Miriam was sobbing so convulsively she couldn’t tell her friend what had happened. And when she tried, when she fought to get the words out, the shame of it overwhelmed her. Frank—the man she loved, her husband —was casting her aside. For a long while Leora just held her, murmuring, “Hush, hush now,” and finally the martinis were there—the beaded shaker, the delicate stem of the glass, the olive skewered on a toothpick—and Miriam felt the calm descend like the curtain falling at the end of a play.
She took the cocktail and downed it in two gulps. Tears clouded her eyes. “Frank,” she began, “Frank, he—”
“You’ve got to be strong,” Leora said, and who could blame her if her first thought was morbid? “At his age, well these things have to be expected . . . Lord knows, I should know. And Dwight lingered, that was the worst of it.”
“No, no, you don’t understand—Frank’s divorcing me.”
Five minutes later, the Chinese was out in the flowerbed, recovering the fragments of the summons. Which, after a second martini, they painstakingly reconstructed as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. The first thing, they both agreed, even before calling Frank, was to write the judge in the case and insist, or rather plead, that she wanted a reconciliation, that she loved her husband still, that their separation was temporary—for her health, just till she recovered her health—and she’d never even dreamed of divorce. Leora helped her with the letter, which ran to three pages, typed, and immediately she felt better. She thought she might like to put something on her stomach—veal chops, mashed potatoes, haricots verts (the Chinese really was a marvelous cook)—and then she went to the telephone. Or no, she took up the telephone as if it were a weapon, a sword she could wield with a single hand and still manage to draw blood at a distance of two thousand miles, eight o’clock in California—ten there, just when he’d be in the studio, lost to the world over his drawings, unless he was having one of his musical nights amidst the foreign toadies and kiss-ups he’d surrounded himself with.
The operator
Before she knew what she was doing she’d balled the summons in her fist and she was tearing it to pieces and flinging those pieces—sad defeated little flakes of paper like shed skin—into the flowerbed. She was in the house next, not the main house but the bungalow out back, and she had a lamp in her hand—Leora’s lamp, a hand-me-down, rubbish from the rubbish shop, no antique—and she was methodically beating it against the white plaster wall. Which was crumbling, right there before her, in an accumulating avalanche of white powder.
It was Leora who discovered her—she must have been crying out, the Chinese popping his head in the door like a jack-in-the-box and in the next moment Leora rushing into the room and calling out her name over and over, as if to remind her who she was, to bring her back, and it was as if she’d been transported out of her body, her mind flying off to cling to some hidden perch and her muscles working all on their own. The lamp was of brass. It clanged and clanged till it was a bell tolling for the dead, Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! She remembered Leora throwing her arms around her—restraining her—and Leora’s emollient voice pouring like syrup into her ear. And then they were on the couch together, the Chinese hurrying off to mix a shaker of martinis because this was an emergency, that much was clear—the lamp destroyed, the wall rutted and gouged and blood spattered there too and Miriam with her skinned knuckles and the straps of her swimming costume slipped down her shoulders and the wrap come loose so that her breasts swung free—but Miriam was sobbing so convulsively she couldn’t tell her friend what had happened. And when she tried, when she fought to get the words out, the shame of it overwhelmed her. Frank—the man she loved, her husband —was casting her aside. For a long while Leora just held her, murmuring, “Hush, hush now,” and finally the martinis were there—the beaded shaker, the delicate stem of the glass, the olive skewered on a toothpick—and Miriam felt the calm descend like the curtain falling at the end of a play.
She took the cocktail and downed it in two gulps. Tears clouded her eyes. “Frank,” she began, “Frank, he—”
“You’ve got to be strong,” Leora said, and who could blame her if her first thought was morbid? “At his age, well these things have to be expected . . . Lord knows, I should know. And Dwight lingered, that was the worst of it.”
“No, no, you don’t understand—Frank’s divorcing me.”
Five minutes later, the Chinese was out in the flowerbed, recovering the fragments of the summons. Which, after a second martini, they painstakingly reconstructed as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. The first thing, they both agreed, even before calling Frank, was to write the judge in the case and insist, or rather plead, that she wanted a reconciliation, that she loved her husband still, that their separation was temporary—for her health, just till she recovered her health—and she’d never even dreamed of divorce. Leora helped her with the letter, which ran to three pages, typed, and immediately she felt better. She thought she might like to put something on her stomach—veal chops, mashed potatoes, haricots verts (the Chinese really was a marvelous cook)—and then she went to the telephone. Or no, she took up the telephone as if it were a weapon, a sword she could wield with a single hand and still manage to draw blood at a distance of two thousand miles, eight o’clock in California—ten there, just when he’d be in the studio, lost to the world over his drawings, unless he was having one of his musical nights amidst the foreign toadies and kiss-ups he’d surrounded himself with.
The operator
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