Couples Read Free Page B

wore away after two or three rains, but after the war the chemical companies came up with a compound that lasted pretty well until winter. In winter there could not be too much light. The Michigan snows piled in strata around the glass walls and within the greenhouse there was a lullaby sound of dripping and a rasping purring in the pipes rusted tothe color of dirt as they snaked along the dirt floor flecked with tiny clover. A child cried out in her sleep. As if being strangled in a dream. From the voice he guessed it had been Nancy. She, who could tie her shoes at the age of three, had lately, now five, begun to suck her thumb and talk about dying. I will never grow up and I will never ever in my whole life die . Ruth, her sister, nine last November, hated to hear her. Yes you will die everybody will die including trees . Piet wondered if he should go to Nancy’s room but the cry was not repeated. Into the vacuum of his listening flowed a rhythmic squeaking insistent as breathing. A needle working in the night. For her birthday he had given Ruth a hamster; the little animal, sack-shaped and russet, slept all day and ran in its exercise wheel all night. Piet vowed to oil the wheel but meanwhile tried to time his breathing with its beat. Too fast; his heart raced, seemed to bulge like a knapsack as into it was abruptly stuffed two thoughts that in the perspective of the night loomed as dreadful: soon he must begin building ranch houses on Indian Hill, and Angela wanted no more children. He would never have a son. Eek, ik, eeik, ik, eeek . Relax. Tomorrow is Sunday.
    A truck passed on the road and his ears followed it, focused on its vanishing point. As a child he had soothed himself with the sensation of things passing in the night, automobiles and trains, their furry growling sounds approaching and holding fast on a momentary plateau and then receding, leaving him ignored and untouched, passing on to Chicago or Detroit, Kalamazoo or Battle Creek or the other way to the snow, stitched with animal tracks, of the northern peninsula that only boats could reach. A bridge had since been built. He had pictured himself as Superman, with a chest of steel the flanged wheels of the engines could not dent, passing over him. The retreating whistles of those flatland trains had seemed drawnwith a pencil sharpened so fine that in reality it broke. No such thing in nature as a point, or a perfect circle, or infinitude, or a hereafter. The truck had vanished. But must be, must. Must. Is somewhere.
    Traffic this late in this corner of New England, between Plymouth and Quincy, between Nun’s Bay and Lacetown, was sparse, and he waited a long stretch for the next truck to come lull him. Angela stirred, sluggishly avoiding some obstacle to the onflow of her sleep, a dream wanting to be born, and he remembered the last time they had made love, over a week ago, in another season, winter. Though he had skated patiently waiting for her skin to quicken from beneath she had finally despaired of having a climax and asked him simply to take her and be done. Released, she had turned away, and in looping his arm around her chest his fingers brushed an unexpected sad solidity.
    Angel, your nipples are hard .
    So?
    You’re excited and could have come too .
    I don’t think so. It just means I’m chilly .
    Let me make you come. With my mouth .
    No. I’m all wet down there .
    But it’s me, it’s my wetness .
    I want to go to sleep .
    But it’s so sad, that you liked my making love to you after all .
    I don’t see that it’s that sad. We’ll all be here another night .
    He lay on his back like a town suspended from a steeple. He felt delicate on his face a draft from somewhere in his snug house, a loose storm window, a tear in the attic foil, a murderer easing open a door. He rolled over on his stomach and the greenhouse washed over him. The tables like great wooden trays, the flowers budding and blooming and droppingtheir petals and not being