Separate Flights by Andre Dubus Page A

would be asleep with her fever and there was nothing really to tell yet, I didn’t really know yet, and after that I lay in bed, quick-hearted and alert, and waited and smoked.
    At ten minutes after three he started his car. I ran tiptoeing to the living room window as his car slowly left the curb and Terry stood on the sidewalk, smoking; she lifted a hand, waving as Hank drove down the street. He blinked his interior light, but I couldn’t see him, then his car was dark, just tail lights again, and then he was gone and the street was quiet. She stood smoking. When she flicked the cigarette in the street and started up the walk, I ran back to the bedroom. She came in and crossed the living room, into the dining room and bathroom. She stayed there a while: water ran, the toilet flushed, water ran again. Then in the kitchen she popped open a beer and went to the living room; her lighter clicked, scraped, clicked shut. When she finished the beer she plunked it down on the coffee table and came into the bedroom.
    â€˜Where’ve you been?’
    She got out of her clothes and dropped them on the floor, and lies cracked her voice: ‘I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep so I went out for a walk.’
    She went naked to the living room and came back shaking a cigarette from her pack and lit it and got into bed.
    â€˜Terry.’
    â€˜What.’
    â€˜You don’t have to tell me that. I woke up at two-twenty.’
    She drew on her cigarette. Still she had not looked at me.
    â€˜You bastard. Did you ever go to sleep?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I wish I could believe that.’
    â€˜I was tired.’
    â€˜You could’ve brought me to bed.’
    â€˜You could’ve come with me.’
    She threw back the sheet and blanket and got out of bed and went fast, pale skin and flopping hair, out of the room. She came back with a beer and got into bed and covered up and bent the pillow under her head so she could drink.
    â€˜I’m lonely, that’s why. I’m a woman, I’m sorry, I can’t be anything else, and I need to be told that and I need to be made love to, you don’t make love with me anymore, you fuck me; I sat on the steps with him and he held my hand and listened to me talk about this shitty marriage because all you ever see is the house, you don’t see me, and he said let’s go see the bronze angel, we’ve never seen it in the dark, and I was happy when he said that and I was happy making love—’
    So she had really done it, and I lay there feeling her wash down me, from my throat, down my chest, my legs, then gone like surf from the sea, cold like the sea.
    â€˜â€”and I lay afterward looking up at her wings and for the first time since leaving the porch I thought of you and for a moment under her wings I hated you for bringing me to this. Then that went away. I wanted to go home and seal up the split between us, like gluing this shitty old furniture, I wanted to clap my hands for Tinker Bell, do something profound and magic that would bring us back the way we used to be, when we were happy. When you loved me and when I never would have made love with someone else. And all the way walking home I wanted to hurry and be with you, here in this bed in this house with my husband and children where I belong. And right now I love you I think more than I have for years but I’m angry, Jack, way down in my blood I’m angry because you set this up in all kinds of ways, you wanted it to happen and now it has and now I don’t know what else will happen, because it’s not ended, making love is never ended—’
    â€˜Are you seeing him again?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Then it’s ended.’
    â€˜Do you thrink making love is like smo king, for Christ sake? That if you quit it’s ov er? It’s not just the act. What’s wrong with you—it’s feeling, it’s—’
    She drank, then sat up