The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller Page B

had pretended to gag. It was only then that she realized she had been asking him whether he would come with her into what she thought of as this new life--and that he was telling her no. No. He needed work he cared about, he needed to be in the world, to feel his life mattered in that way.
    The lights dimmed once, and Pierce and Sam threw their plastic glasses away. They started to walk back into the theater. Sam was telling them about another play he'd seen here earlier in the fall, a one-man show, "Which usually I hate. That it's done at all is really the point. You know, you're called upon to find it amazing. But this was different."
    Pierce asked how, and Sam kept talking, but Leslie, who was ahead of both of them, couldn't hear him. They sat down. She opened her program and was partway through the bio of the actor playing Gabriel, a man named Rafe Donovan, when the lights dimmed.
    The curtain went up on the scene exactly as they'd left it, the three actors standing frozen, looking at one another. Then Gabriel broke away to answer the door, and the other two moved closer together, as if to face whomever, whatever it was, as man and wife. As a couple, at least.
    It was a woman. She burst in just as Alex had, full of recrimination about Gabriel's not answering the phone, and then froze, seeing the other two. Leslie recognized the voice--it was the woman who had called and left the message earlier. She was younger than Gabriel by at least a few years, and attractive, if not really pretty. Dramatic in her looks--long thick hair, dark coloring.
    Gabriel introduced her as a friend, Anita. There followed a scene of awkwardness and growing embarrassment, of slowly dawning awareness on the part of Alex and his wife that Gabriel was somehow involved with this woman. Again, there was something amusing about this, and laughter here and there in the house.
    When Gabriel finally acknowledged the relationship, Alex smiled bitterly and said, "So this part of your life is not so theoretical, right, Dad?"
    Then he turned to the other woman, to Anita. He said, "Well, then ... Anita, is it?"
    She nodded.
    "What have you come calling for, then? At this particular time. On this particular day. Are you here to celebrate with him when he gets the news: he's free! Or to commiserate with him. 'Ah shit! She's alive.'"
    Anita looked in confusion from one of them to another. Gabriel lifted his shoulders. He couldn't help her.
    She turned to Alex. "To be with him," she said. "Whatever the news is, to be with him."
    Her voice was so raw and honest that Alex was silenced for a moment. But then he jerked into motion, picking up his coat, coming around the couch to take the younger woman by the elbow, talking all the while, saying, "Fine, fine, you be with him, someone should be with him, let it be you. For Christ's sake not me, not me anymore. No matter what happens, not me, ever again." They were at the back of the stage, by the door. He turned briefly to look at his father, said nothing, and they were gone, the door slamming behind them.
    Gabriel and Anita stood looking at each other, a little shamefacedly. Then he came around from behind the couch and sat down on it.
    "I'm ... I'm sorry," Anita said. "I shouldn't have come."
    "No, you shouldn't," he said.
    She drew her breath in sharply. She was wounded.
    "What if Elizabeth had been here?" he asked gently.
    "I said I was sorry," she said.
    After a moment, he said, "So, what did you think of my boy Alex?"
    She half smiled. "Somebody should have taught him better manners."
    "At the very least," he said.
    She came and sat on the couch, close to him. He turned his body to her, making a distance between them.
    He looked at her. "I think you should go," he said.
    "I want to be with you."
    He shook his head, his face hardened. "I can't have you here with me. I have to do this alone."
    "You don't. Have to." This was a plea, Leslie thought. Whining. She didn't like this woman.
    "I want to do this alone,