Free A Big Storm Knocked It Over by Laurie Colwin

while her happy guests—happy to be in her warm and happy orbit—finished their coffee. Her children would have been sent sleepily off to bed, the youngest with some adorable and worn bed toy, the older with an appropriately elevating and obscure English children’s book. The remains of her turkey would be neatly tied up in cheesecloth and waxed paper. Erna made a point of cheesecloth and waxed paper. In fact, the insides of her fridge reminded Jane Louise—who had once been dispatched to the kitchen during a party to get another bottle of cold champagne—of a foreign country: the eggs in a French wire basket, juice in a Swedish pitcher, butter in an English butter box. The Indian lime pickle, the ricotta draining in a tub. When Jane Louise described this to Teddy, he said: “It isn’t a fridge. It’s the UN.”
    Erna made her feel like a worm. Oh, the safety and surety of that huge dining room table, those pink-cheeked children, that wedding band, thin as a wire, that didn’t ever need to call attention to itself.
    Jane Louise found Teddy lying on the couch reading the morning paper.
    â€œDid you have any fun?” she asked. He moved over and tried to make room for her, but there wasn’t room so she wedged herself beside him with one foot on the floor.
    â€œI had lots of fun,” Teddy said.
    â€œBut didn’t you miss being in the country?”
    â€œAbout as much as you missed being with your mother and Charlie,” Teddy said. “I think holidays should be abolished.”
    â€œMaybe it’s us,” Jane Louise said. “I mean me. Maybe I just can’t stand to be around anyone I’m related to for any period of time.”
    â€œEdie can’t either,” Teddy pointed out.
    â€œYes, but her brothers are all over each other constantly,” Jane Louise said. “They play handball together. They meet for lunch. They live in the same neighborhood. Their children go to nursery school together.”
    â€œNo one else can stand them,” Teddy said. “As you know, they haven’t any friends, and their wives look exactly alike.”
    â€œI guess if you like your family you don’t need friends,” Jane Louise said. “Maybe friends are a modern invention. Maybe they’re just fluff that fills up some empty space where your extended family used to be.”
    â€œLet’s have a baby,” Teddy said.
    â€œYou mean, right now?” Jane Louise said.
    â€œLet’s practice,” Teddy said. “Get in shape for it.”
    Jane Louise inwardly swooned. What an odd thing it was to have a husband. This person who was almost like a household object—a pillow or a lamp—who transformed you from a single entity into a unit, whose breathing at night was as reassuring as a clock, to whom you could, of an evening, pay almost no attention at all, and who in one minute, with one look, could turn into what a husband in actuality was: a sexual being.
    Jane Louise’s heart contracted. There was in this arrangement some frightening aspect, some scary way in which this connection went beyond connection and spilled into the larger world.
    Teddy peered at her from his couch pillow. His hair was mussed. His glasses were fogged. She could feel his smooth hard chest under his shirt. She put her arms around him and kissed his sweet mouth.
    â€œOkay,” she whispered. “Let’s.”

CHAPTER 10
    In the office Sven turned the force of his intense regard on Jane Louise. She felt picked over, ransacked, probed. He seemed to sniff her, like a mother cat. Now that she was married, she felt he saw right through her. She felt that the nights of her married life were as open to him as a book.
    â€œWhat’s the scene with him? ” she asked Adele, who was herself the X-ray technician of Sven. “He’s all over me.”
    â€œI think one of his girls quit on him,” Adele said.
    Jane Louise