Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work Read Free Page A

current.
    In the following days she formed a list of things she wanted to have and do and be, without Ron. A boat,but not any boat, a giant motor sailer they could take all the way down the coast to Florida, so big there could be a storm and they wouldn’t even notice down in their cabin below, where there would be a fireplace and a television-VCR in one. Who would be sailing the boat? Dion wanted to know. They would hire someone for that. But the rest of their life was imagined in modest proportions: dogs, golden collie mixes, not pure at all; three children; a house where everyone had a bedroom and there was one extra for a guest; and some land with a view of the hills around town. She didn’t want to live down by the river or so close to a neighbor that you could see in their window at night. She had never thought of living anywhere else? He had thought of Montana. Montana—the word sounded chewed in her mouth. God, she said, shaking her head. Other places. Gardner? Farmingdale? Monmouth? Those places, the only other places she knew, were bad enough. Imagine what people were like even further away. No, she wanted to go to Florida, though. Not to live, just to go there as the Nasons did every winter, taking their daughter Julie with them so that she came back with a tan, even if she did look like a squirrel. And no matter what time of year it was Natalie would have fresh flowers in every room of the house. This idea from her mother, of how people really lived. And a horse in a red barn for her daughter. And light blue carpeting in every room. Our room, she said, with acanopy bed, but he didn’t know what one was. It has a kind of roof, like a tent, she explained. He didn’t see the point but pictured it anyway, a bed with a tent in a room that already had a ceiling and above that a roof. He had pictured a cabin in Montana where you could look up and see the nails from the roof shingles coming through. And lavender, she said. No one would be allowed to smoke. Every room would smell of lavender. Like me, she said, and pressed her wrist to his nose. This was the smell of their future.
    None of us had been in love, not really, until now. Anything we had called love came back to us as mockery in the face of this sudden flight from reason. Andy had said he was in love with Missy, and it was a shame Missy was not in love with him. A daily lament rose from him like the steam of the heat from the pipes at school. Andy’s mother hit the counter with her fist. “They’re too young,” she said, talking about Natalie and Dion, and we knew she was talking about their tongues running along the inside of each other’s teeth and the suddenly anxious too-tight grip of her hand between his legs, and the taste of each other’s skin, and the smell of each other’s bodies, and the feel of him slipping inside her and her settling down over him, the shape of her mouth, the shape of his. She was talking about their bodies but thinking about the words they had used. Everyone knew. “Love,” she finally growled, as if the creature itself had risen from her dreams to take over her kitchen. She gripped a package ofspaghetti as if it was a club and stared at the wall, paralyzed by the idea of them out there.
    They hadn’t been going out for a week when she got in his brother’s car and rode out to the next county. They ate at a Howard Johnson’s. She ordered an ice cream sundae and he ordered a grilled cheese sandwich to go, in case she wanted to go all of a sudden. She ate her sundae and ordered a milk shake; he couldn’t eat. He bought her a blue shirt in a fancy store, a boutique. It’s a nice shirt, he said. It looks nice on you. It’s a blouse, she said, turning for him in the parking lot with her eyes closed. A blouse, he repeated.
    She made him drive faster, clinging to his arm, with her lips pecking gently against the nape of his neck. God, she said, God. Her breath