Free Heart Troubles by Stephen; Birmingham Page B

invited the Dixons for the following Saturday night.
    Sure enough, Eleanor had no sooner spotted the table than she marched to it. “Darling, where in the world did you get it?” she demanded.
    â€œIn a funny little shop on Lexington,” Irene said.
    â€œWhat shop?”
    â€œI’ve forgotten the name,” Irene said.
    â€œOh, you can’t have forgotten! I must know.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s another like it in the world.”
    â€œHey,” John Dixon said, “I get it—it’s like the back of a checkerboard.”
    â€œIt’s a backgammon table,” Justin said. “Haven’t you ever played backgammon?”
    â€œWe have such fun with it,” Irene said. “We’ve got so we play backgammon night after night. It’s our favorite pastime.”
    â€œWell, for heaven’s sake,” Eleanor Dixon said.
    â€œIt’s a fascinating game, really,” Irene said. “And highly skilled. It’s one of the oldest games there is. No one knows how old, exactly, it is, but they played backgammon in the days of the Roman Empire.”
    â€œYou don’t say.”
    â€œI call the color antique pigeon’s blood,” Irene said. “Isn’t it an old, old looking pink? The table is over a hundred and fifty years old itself. The marble was probably quarried in Algeria and the stone has a date on the back of it that looks like 1802.”
    Eleanor knelt to examine the carved letters and numbers on the underside.
    â€œHere,” Justin said, “I’ll show you—”
    â€œDon’t lift it, Justin,” Irene said.
    â€œI can see the lettering,” Eleanor said.
    â€œI want to show you how translucent it is,” Justin said. “Here, let me hold it up to the light.”
    â€œPlease don’t lift it, Justin!” Irene said. “You’ll drop it.”
    â€œI won’t drop it. I want to show Eleanor—”
    â€œNo—”
    He started to lift it, and at the same time she reached out to restrain him. For a brief moment they struggled over it—one raising the table upward and the other pressing it down—and so, when it fell, suddenly, from their hands and crashed to the floor it seemed impossible that they had done it together and yet, at the same time, they knew that they had.
    Irene looked blankly at the broken marble and then cried out as if the jagged mountains and canyons she had seen beneath its surf ace had collapsed upon her and stabbed her. “Oh, you idiot!” she screamed. “You stupid, clumsy fool! You did it!”
    He stood facing her, his hands trembling. “You,” he said. “You did it! You did it, just as you’ve done everything else. You destroyed it, just as you’ve destroyed everything, always! Always arranging, planning, dominating everything—it’s you! It’s you who’ve broken everything, always!”
    â€œOh, no!” She sank to her knees, sobbing, picked up the scattered pieces of broken marble and crushed them to her bosom. “Oh, God!” she cried. “I can’t bear to live without it!”
    â€œOh, dear, dear—” Eleanor Dixon whispered.
    â€œMaybe you can find another like it, Irene,” John Dixon said lamely.
    But they did not find another like it.
    It turned out to be insured under one of the policies the Siltons maintained on their home and property, and after a week or two Justin told Irene that he put in a claim for the cost of the table. “I guess that makes me feel a little better about it,” he said. “It’s good to get money back from the insurance company for a change.”
    Irene said nothing.
    At Abercrombie & Fitch she bought a folding wooden backgammon board. It did not have the cool feel of the marble table, of course, and it produced no clear and true ring when the dice were cast upon it, as the other had. In other ways, too, it was