Ordinary Love and Good Will Read Free Page B

it, “Do you think you’re afraid of having him back? Of the closeness, I mean?”
    He turns the book over once, looking at it rather than at me. “No. I was afraid he would go away as my twin and come back as my brother. I don’t want that.” He sighs. “He doesn’t either.”
    “I’m sure he doesn’t.”
    “There are a lot of things that are unspoken between us, you know.”
    “That’s always been true.” I sit at the table, groping for the most delicate kind of tact. This is an argument we have been tending toward all summer, and I don’t want to have it now. “I think it’s important that we don’t seem clinging. He went far away. He must have known he would come back different from you as well as from his old self. Maybe he intended it.”
    “I think he thought it was a price he might have to pay for getting away from everything else.” He says this in a detached but definite tone, as if he isn’t going to listen to any more on the subject. We smile again, a truce, and he says, “I might have fixed the lawnmower.” He puts his hand in his pocket. “There are just these few leftover items.” He pulls out two screws of different sizes, a washer, and a bolt that will fit neither screw. “Think they’re important, or can we ignore them?” I laugh, then Joe laughs. I say, “I think you’d better go back and try again. But the leftover parts are getting smaller, at least.”
    “Just promise me you won’t sneak it out of the garage and over to the repair shop.”
    “Not on a bet. I want to see you rise to the challenge.”
    “Haven’t thrown anything yet. Only rammed my head into the wall of the garage once.”
    Now there is a shout from the living room, and Ellen appears, framed by the living room doorway, but standing back, suspicious. Joe pushes his chair back and says, “He’s asleep.” Relieved, Ellen steps into the kitchen. She doesn’t speak. She never does, right at first. She picks up Joe’s bookand looks at it, then turns and looks into one of the cupboards by the sink. She takes out a glass and runs herself a drink of water. “Well?” she says.
    “Thin,” I say. “Amebic dysentery.”
    “Ugh. Right in the house here, huh?”
    “It’s not like that,” snaps Joe.
    “I was only making a joke.”
    “Not funny.” They look at each other. He is glaring. She is considering. I say, “I thought you weren’t coming over.”
    She throws up her hands.
    I can hear Tracy and Diane in the front yard. Joe put up a tire swing for them in June, and they have been all over it, having fun, I say. “Building poignant memories,” Joe says. His nostalgia is militant, almost hard, almost a reproach.
    “So how are you?” says Ellen to Joe, and he stops glaring. He says, “I don’t know.” Then he says, annoyed, “What’s the big deal? I mean, he went away and he came back. He told us he was going away, and how long he was going to be gone, and he came back when he said he would. I’m pissed off.”
    “At whom?” says Ellen.
    “At myself, of course,” says Joe. And he goes over to the coffeemaker and pours himself a cup of coffee and drinks it down. Then he slams out the back door, saying, “I’m going to start over on the lawnmower now.”
    Ellen says, “Is he still fixing the lawnmower?”
    “Fixing it again.”
    “Would you just borrow ours and cut the grass? The police are going to cite you pretty soon.”
    “Let them.” But before I’ve even finished speaking, she has picked up Joe’s book and started reading it. She can’t resist. She even says, “Hmm!” in a surprised and interested voice. I know the rudeness she treats me with is a habit, but is calculated, too, as a test of how much familiarity Iwill allow. Our conversation must always seem as if it has no breaks, is uninterrupted by formal greetings or farewells, is beyond routine civilities, is as close to mind-reading as possible.
    Now Ellen puts the book down and looks at me expectantly. I say,