Read Online Women Drinking Benedictine by Sharon Dilworth - Free Book Online Page B

the three of them eat picnic-style watching the news. Mitch is wearing shorts, and the hair on his legs is wet with perspiration. Carol watches him while he eats. Kevin is quiet, but seems pleased with the meal. He is engrossed in the television and seems to get more of the jokes than Carol does.
    The food makes Carol listless. The night is duller than she had imagined. She tries to stay awake but nods off during one of the situation comedies. She jerks up when she hears Kevin’s laugh. Mitch is in the kitchen trying to stuff all the paper trash into the small trash can. She opens a garbage bag for him and he fills it.
    â€œIt’d be easier to adopt a child overseas,” Mitch jokes. “Think how simple it would be to mail in seventy-two cents a day.”
    â€œThat’s not the point.” It occurs to her that maybe the only reason he is sticking out the volunteer job is that he wants to see her. This thought pleases her.
    He smiles. “Watching three hours of TV a night is?” He pushes the hair off her face and tucks it behind her ear. He is always doing things like this—touching her in small ways that make Carol feel he’d be a caring lover. They are alone. It is just the moment that he should kiss her. She waits, but he goes to the sink and washes the barbecue sauce off his hands.
    As soon as Kevin and Mitch leave, Carol goes to bed. She thinks of Mitch’s hand on her face and knows that they are getting closer. The next morning she’s awake by five-thirty, feeling refreshed and ready for the day to begin. She showers, dresses for work, and then sits on the front porch with her coffee and last night’s newspaper. The air is gray, and waking noises strike like echoes as they move across the silent city.
    Mitch’s side door slams shut, and Carol watches a woman walk down the drive. The woman smiles and says good morning, but Carol is too surprised to react. Instead she looks down at the newspaper in her lap and tries to understand the bold print of the headlines. Carol hears the sound of an engine, then the hum of tires, as a red Toyota disappears around the corner.
    She knows it’s not fair. It’s not fair that Mitch slept with a woman after spending the evening with her. He has never mentioned that he was seeing anyone, and Carol suspects he kept it from her deliberately. She feels betrayed by his touch in the kitchen—betrayed that he would go on to touch someone else more intimately.
    Though it is only six-fifteen, Carol decides to leave for the hospital where she works. She doesn’t care how early she arrives. Her coffee cup is half full when she throws it at Mitch’s bedroom window. She wants him to know that she’s seen his woman. The leftover liquid swirls around the cup, but the shot is just short of the window. There is no sound when it lands in the tangled, overgrown bushes.
    The temperature crawls past one hundred degrees and stays there as the week begins, then drags on, with the sun piercing steadily. The city traps the heat and holds it in the miles of cement. The windless nights do nothing to cool the air.
    Carol keeps an eye out for the woman and her red Toyota, but sees neither. One night, stepping out of the shower, she hears Mitch’s laugh, then the steady stream of his voice through the open windows. She flicks off the light and stands in the darkness, straining to make sense of his words. She is wet, and when the warm night air circles through the bathroom, she shivers. She sees the trail of phone cord as he paces in front of the stove. It is a relief to find him alone. She dries herself with the damp bath towel in the dark, still listening, trying to figure out who he’s talking to.
    On Thursday she crosses the front lawn to Mitch’s house half an hour before they normally leave for their volunteer jobs. She makes a reference to the heat, saying that she is anxious to be in the air-conditioned library. Mitch is