My Dearest Friend Read Free Page B

held the bottle to her daughter’s lips. Alexandra took a big suck, her eyes widened, and she spat.
    “Yucky!”
    “Thank God,” Carey Ann said under her breath, wiping the spit off the mouth of her bottle. “Now I can have it for myself. Here, Alexandra, here’s
your
bottle.”
    They spread their feast out on the paper wrappers on the dining-room table. Thirty feet away, at the other end of the room, the great wall of window glowed with early-autumnlight, green leaves just turning gold, blue sky. It was after six, but still bright.
    “So?” Carey Ann said eagerly. “How did it go?”
    “Great,” Jack said, smiling. It both amused and pleased him that Carey Ann was so awed by his work, as if teaching freshman English and neoclassic literature required the bravery and courage of an astronaut. She couldn’t imagine how she’d keep a class of twenty-five young people quiet and interested for an hour. As he spoke of students and schedules, she listened intently, shaking her head in admiration. Jack was thirty-one, Carey Ann twenty-four, but she seemed so much younger. Sometimes she seemed so terribly young. (And sometimes that was good, and sometimes not.) “The composition classes will be fun, and easy—I can do that with my eyes closed, it’s what I did at UMKC. But the neoclassic class—God, it’s such dull stuff I’m still worried about how to get the students interested. But hey, I forgot to tell you—we’re invited to a party next Friday night.”
    “Oh,” Carey Ann said, looking down. She began to busy herself with Alexandra, who for once was silent, lying in her mother’s lap, content with her bottle. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, we’d need a baby-sitter for Lexi, and I don’t know anyone yet …” Were those tears in her eyelashes? She kept looking down.
    Jack stared at his wife. She didn’t raise her head.
Here we go again,
he thought, then with a burst of self-controlled energy jumped up from his chair. “I’m going to run up to the bedroom and change out of these clothes.” He took the stairs two at a time, needing to burn up the anger that had burst inside him.
What
would make that woman happy? She’d been afraid to leave Kansas because she didn’t know anyone back east and didn’t have any friends in the Westhampton area, and she was a woman who loved being with friends, but here was a chance for her to meet people and she acted as if he’d just suggested a visit to the dentist.
    In a frenzy he stripped off his clothes and hung them up neatly, trekking into the bathroom to put his socks in the hamper; Carey Ann sure wouldn’t be able to say he had left the room a mess, had left his socks for her to pick up. Turning, he caught sight of his face in the bathroom mirror. Boy, did he look grim. He sighed and put the toilet lid down and sat there a moment in his Jockey shorts, trying to calm down.
    He didn’t want an instant replay of last night. Last night had been terrible. He had driven home from the college through a sun-dappled September day, as brilliant as any day he had ever known, and, arms laden with briefcase and groceries, had burst into hisbeautiful and overwarm house to find his wife and child seated in front of the TV.
    “TV?” he had yelled. “Hey, you guys, what are you doing in front of the TV on a beautiful day like this?”
    It had been a spontaneous outburst, purely curious. He had meant no criticism and had thought there was nothing but enthusiasm in his voice.
    But, “What’s wrong with watching TV?” Carey Ann had said, bursting into tears immediately. “Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know anyone to go visit. There isn’t a neighborhood around here. We’re stuck out in the old country! What am I supposed to do with a toddler? Do you have any idea how hard it is to follow a little kid around all day? It’s backbreaking. Besides, I like watching TV! It makes me feel better to see all those people whose lives are worse than mine!”
    “Worse