Sourland by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

something tiny that has fallen from its nest, or something that has been expelled from its shell, its protective armor.
    She shuddered with the knowledge, Mommy was their protective armor. She was not wearing the bulky car coat now but a coat of soft black cashmere with a blank mink collar, that fell in loose folds about her slender legs.
    In the rearview mirror above the windshield her face gleamed pale as a moon. Fine lines at the corners of her eyes not visible in the glass. She smiled, uneasy. For a long time she’d been one of the young wives, one of the younger mothers, now no longer. She thought I am a beautiful woman, I have a right to be loved.
    Lying beside her heavily sleeping husband, nights in succession for nine years. She could not remember their first time together, it seemed as if they had always known each other, as children perhaps. Her husband was a man who shook hands forcefully, looked you in the eye. A man you could trust. A man you wanted to know. She had seen him look appraisingly at women, she’d seen the way women looked at him. He was careless, there was something imperial about him, he was a six-foot boy, confident of being admired. He was a man who could not love her quite so much as she loved him, he’d admitted this. Even in wounding her, saying such a thing, he seemed to be granting a blessing, tossing gold coins at her.
    In all marriages there is the imbalance: one who loves more than the other. One who licks wounds in secret, the rust-taste of blood.
    Now she was no longer on the expressway, she was uncertain where to turn. The streets of the City Center were narrow, one-way, congested with delivery trucks. A dying city, why was there so much traffic? She could see the gleaming tower of the hotel that was her destination. She could not possibly get lost in a maze of streets, so close to the hotel! She regretted she hadn’t left home earlier. Her pride in not having left home earlier. She had stared at the clock mesmerized, she had held herself back. Then calmly telling Ismelda: I have an appointment, downtown. I will be back by. Her eyes shone like the eyes of one unaccustomed to emotion, taking care not to stammer.
    In this season of their marriage, her husband often returned homelate. He was an enormously busy man, he had both an assistant and a secretary. He had business luncheons, dinners. He was in New York City, in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles. Yet he was one of the younger men in his firm, his elders looked upon him with admiration and approval. The children loved Daddy emptying his pockets for them, pennies and nickels, dimes. She was fearful of lying to this man, he might hear the quaver in her voice with indifference.
    She had turned the station wagon in to a parking garage. She was beginning to be anxious. She would be late meeting him, she had no idea if he would wait for her. He was not a man accustomed to waiting for women, she supposed. He was not a resident of this city, he came here on business. Though perhaps it wasn’t business as her husband might identify it. He appeared to have money, he appeared to be unmarried, not a father. She tried to recall his eyes, if they were brown, if they were dark, she could recall only the impact of his eyes, the heavy lids, the carved-looking face, a singular face, one she’d felt she had recognized, that left her weak to contemplate. She could not have said his middle name: did not know exactly how to spell his surname. (Perhaps—she had to concede this!—she didn’t know his actual name.) What he’d said to her, she could not recall except it had made her laugh initially, with a kind of visceral shock, and then it had made her weak. He’d told her he stayed at the new hotel by the river, where there was a heliport. The governor of the state was flown to the city, often. They’d been cadets together out in Colorado.
    It was a torment to her, in her agitated state: navigating the damned