Free American Appetites by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

.”
    â€œBut, honey, when did you make them?”
    There is an edge to Glynnis’s voice which she has not intended; Bianca, tossing down the wad of filthy Kleenex, gives her a guilty sullen sidelong look. “ When did I make them? I don’t know, for Christ’s sake. Is this an interrogation or something?”
    Glynnis says, as if this were the issue, “You do have to eat, don’t you?” and Bianca says, shrugging, embarrassed, “Mother, I’ll eat .” And within seconds, though Glynnis has vowed not to be drawn into a quarrel that evening—has vowed not to lose her temper with Bianca, no matter how the girl tempts her—they are quarreling: their old quarrel of years, in a new or, in truth, not so new guise, turning upon Bianca’s thoughtlessness, her forgetfulness, her surely deliberate selfishness. “You want to spoil the evening, don’t you,” Glynnis says, her eyes filling with tears. “You want to spoil your father’s birthday, and all my plans.”
    Bianca says meanly, “Mother, the universe does not turn upon you and all your plans .”
    She seems to be daring Glynnis to slap her: to slap her in the face as she deserves to be slapped; as, not so very long ago, mother slapped daughter, not often, not with any regularity, but often enough.
    I hate you , daughter would then scream. As if a lever had been thrown, a lock clicked into place. I wish I was dead, and I wish you were dead .
    Glynnis says now, carefully, “I’m sorry you feel that way, Bianca.” she leaves her daughter’s room, closes the door, her heart beating quickly and her hands trembling, as if she has narrowly escaped danger. From the other end of the house comes laughter and raised voices, that familiar, gratifying, so very consoling sound of friends: friends enjoying themselves at one of the McCulloughs’ parties. It is always the same party, Glynnis thinks, happily; from even so short a distance as this, always the same. And, pace Bianca, the universe does turn upon it.
    In the kitchen, she sips from what remains of her glass of champagne. She must begin her last-minute sleight of hand; she and Marvis planned to serve the first course before nine-thirty, and now it is nearly ten.
    4.
    It would turn out to be three-thirty in the morning, a Sunday morning, the previous September, hardly a week after Bianca had left for college (though there was no relationship between the events, of course), that the McCulloughs were wakened from their sleep by a knocking: more than a knocking, as they’d afterward describe it, a violent hammering, at the front door. What in God’s name? Ian said, and Glynnis, terrified, clutching at his arm, whispered, We can’t answer it! Don’t let them see us!
    The McCulloughs’ house, designed by a prominent local architect, was set back from the road, even more reclusively than most houses in this part of Hazelton; it had a good deal of glass—plate-glass windows, sliding doors, skylights. It consisted of eight units, four of which were built around an open atrium; one entered the atrium to approach the front door. The bedrooms, the “private” quarters, were of course hidden from the others yet not, in terms of distance, so very far from them. The terrible hammering at the front door was probably not more than thirty feet from where the McCulloughs, now fully wakened, were sitting up in bed, not knowing what to do: for what, in such circumstances, such frightening and wholly unprecedented circumstances, should one do?
    Glynnis wanted to call the police; Ian thought he should go to see who it was; Glynnis begged him no, no—Then they’ll see you; they’ll know we are here. Ian said, practically, fumbling for his glasses, But they know we are here; the cars are in the driveway. (The hammering had stopped; then began again, as if with renewed ferocity.) The McCulloughs were on their feet