Free Passion and Affect by Laurie Colwin Page A

him. Life had put everything lovely into his hands and had not taken it away. He knew it was not impossible that things would stay this way, but looking at the world, he knew it was improbable. He wondered why the coin of his life didn’t turn, show its reverse side and leave him stranded with empty hands. He put on the radio and let the car fill up with music.
    When he got home, the total quiet of his house dazed him. He sat on the sofa and added the fear of madness to his catalogue: he was afraid to breathe, afraid to let the thought of his loneliness filter in to him. He realized that if life were to reverse itself and everything he loved was taken away from him, it would resemble this thick, empty silence. He was to live this way for a week, but it seemed unbearable for even fifteen minutes. When Max and Olivia had first met, she remarked that he spent a lot of time staring at her. He knew every plane in her face, every line on her palm, the shape of each of her fingernails. He thought he could enumerate the hairs on his children’s bright heads if he were called upon to do so. He stored these things up to have them firmly in his mind should he ever be deprived. After dinner, his family was used to his pushing his chair back and watching them quietly as they finished their coffee and cocoa. If he stared at Olivia, she would say, “Aren’t you tired of staring at me after all these years?” And Max would say, “I never get used to anything.”
    He got up to put on his boots and hunting jacket and took Eddie Crater’s rifle out of the locked cupboard. It was dinner time. There was a cold roast in the icebox and a long note taped to the cabinet reminding him where the butter was and when Hattie, the cleaning lady, would be in. He read it and put it in his pocket. It was a love letter from Olivia, who knew he knew the place for every dish, pot, and pan in the kitchen.
    He went to the door, about to go out, but the silence of the house drove him back. With the rifle in his hand he went into the dining room, and stood there. He read the grain in the walnut table as if it were print. He memorized how the afternoon light hit the tea service and lit up the back of the curtains. He went from room to room. It was dusk, but he didn’t have the heart to turn on any lights. In the living room his eyes went from the rug to the fireplace to the clumsy plaster lumps his children modeled at school, placed on the mantelpiece. He stood in the study, holding in his gunless hand an antique decoy that was as worn and soft as soap. Upstairs he stood at the thresholds of his children’s rooms. He went to the bedroom, to the attic, his boots clacking awkwardly against his shins. He realized that he was patrolling his house.
    Finally he went out to the Sound and sat on the rock. The earth was spongy beneath his feet and there was thick foam on the sand. A wind came through the pines.
    He heard a soft splash in the water and cocked the gun. Something moved in the Sound but in the twilight he couldn’t be sure if it was a swell or a rat. He didn’t know what to do. The thing surfaced and looked at him. Its eyes glowed like glass. It lifted its sleek head, pulled itself out of the water, and dashed toward the woods. It was a raccoon. Max lifted the gun and aimed at it, but when he realized what he was about to do he walked to the edge of the water, knelt down, and began to cry. Then he got up and hurled the gun out into the Sound as far as he could throw.
    When he got back to the house, he took off his wet, cold clothes and sat in his bathrobe in the living room. He was beginning to feel hungry. On his way to the kitchen, the telephone rang. He knew it was Olivia. He picked up the receiver—it was long distance from Bermuda.
    â€œWe’re all safe,” she said. “It’s so blue here. The kids are just sitting down to dinner. I miss you.”
    â€œI miss you.”
    â€œAre you all