No Place for an Angel by Elizabeth Spencer Page B

never guessed. I know it sounds ridiculous.”
    â€œCatherine,” said Irene, “did you ever get a divorce from Jerry Sasser?”
    She shook her head. “Perhaps I should do it yet. Some people said one thing, some another. To me it seemed an added strain. Once you start it, you have to go on with it—” she laughed—“like being drawn up in a vacuum cleaner.” She could flash so lightly through saying such a thing, and it was in moments like this that Irene felt the tug of Catherine’s whole history, and she felt, too, almost like a puzzle laid out to be put together, the strong lure of a challenge; namely, to solve the riddle of Catherine. And forty years later I would wind up, thought Irene (with her own kind of ironic humor closed beneath a smooth countenance), worn to emotional fragments, and Catherine, mad as ever, would be completely the same.
    She walked to the desk and pulled out a note pad. “Here,” she said, writing.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œIt’s Barry’s address and number. I think he may even have got in the phone book but he’s moved since.”
    Catherine took the small leaf, torn out neatly along its perforation, and tucked it in her small leather bag. “I don’t think I shall use it,” she reassured Irene. “Not after what you told me.” She pulled on her gloves and was gone soon after, had melted from view like an apparition.

    When Irene got Charles’ long soul-searching letter from Florida announcing his decision to return, she skimmed it in one minute to get to the heart of the matter: back on Saturday.
    She did not call the twins to tell them the news, though she had promised to. On the drive back from Florida, they had sweetly consoled her. “This happens to a lot of boys’ parents,” they had said, citing all the examples they knew. One boy’s father had chased his mother around the house at 3 A.M . with a gun. Some things like this were made up and told for melodramatic effect, but the twins believed this to be true. “And then they come back, sometimes,” said Will. “ Most of the time,” said Tom. “Do we know enough to make up a statistical sampling?” he asked. “I think it would not be representative,” said Will. “As if a statistical average ever comforted anybody,” said Irene, passing a Pepsi-Cola truck. “Why, of course, they comfort people,” said Will. “Certainly,” said Tom. “They run graphs in the newspaper about the Gross National Product every time there’s a serious drop in the market.” “I wish you weren’t so damn bright,” said Irene. They both laughed. “It will bring you nothing but trouble,” she threatened darkly. “I need some new loafers,” said Will. “These are just about gone.”
    All the way, Charles’ head had loomed high and lonely in her mind, dominating Key West as it had Siracusa. The clouds passed high over it, drifting; the head was domed, bald, high, beak-nosed, blue-eyed, and thin-lipped. Who knew what Charles was better than the clouds did? If clouds knew him, he was, of course, imperial, and could desert her if he chose without explaining anything. Nature is acquainted with emperors. A car honked her aside. She gasped and set herself straight with the white line. There was no good having a wreck and killing the boys. The job in hand always kept Irene going; to get the boys in school as quickly as she could now led her on. They ate hamburgers and peanuts all the way, but were not sick. God knows, she thought, they couldn’t be a more docile pair, they even have fool-proof digestive systems. “Darlings,” she murmured, having left the president’s office at a moderately well-known Virginia academy where she had fixed up the problem of expenses and tuition with no great loss of face “Angels.” She put her arms around them,