Free The Ice Storm by Rick Moody

said, only three percent .
    She thought of Janey Williams’s breasts, the perfect way she presented them, in a brassiere that probably carved tracks in her shoulders. Her breasts were large and rounded. This you couldn’t miss, through her lacy, flimsy chemises. Ripe and properly displayed, the way the men of Elena’s acquaintance liked them. Janey was not afraid of presentation, while Elena was, on the other hand, small and compact and reserved. But she was sexual and capable of abandon. The mistake Benjamin made—in assuming she was only one kind of person, a virgin bride of the Eisenhower years, a daughter of gentility—brought her as close to outrage as she came. She had read widely on the subject of personal growth. She wasn’t impervious to change. There was growth left in her. To pin her down, wriggling like a butterfly specimen, was a kind of violence.
    Still, when she had to be, she was a chef. She filled a saucepan from the tap, set it on the range, and immersed in it the brick of frozen peas. They were frozen into a small rectangular pool of yellow simulated butter. Then she exhumed the turkey carcass from its tomb in the fridge and set it on a cutting board. As dispassionately as any butcher, Elena aligned the hewn strips of turkey on each of three plates. Turkey the day after was the most heartbreaking protein she could imagine.
    In the den, the screen door opened. The announcement of bad conversation. The gales had begun to whistle around the side of the house and over the creek. As her husband slid the door closed, this howling hushed briefly. Shuffling into the kitchen, Benjamin and Wendy muttered hello like late arrivals at church.
    â€”Ten minutes, Elena said.
    These estimates were almost always folly.
    â€”Go dry off, Benjamin said to his daughter.
    The two of them, Ben and Wendy, were peeling off their footwear. The puddles extended around them in rivers across the kitchen floor, back toward the hall carpeting. They carried their drenched garments around the sink to the laundry room. Wendy stripped off her poncho and her pants and shook out her hair. In her panties, she stood dripping. It was one good thing Elena had done, she remembered; she had given birth to a great beauty.
    Ben followed Wendy back toward the stairs, and Elena followed Ben. They climbed the stairs in this order. Wendy commandeered the bathroom right away. There was the firm ping of the push-button lock.
    The hall was blue-gray and the master bedroom was blue-gray and the rug was a deeper shade of blue-gray and the curtains were a sort of blue-gray. The bedspread on the master bed was blue and red, checked. The light outside was blue-gray, and when Elena switched on a light by the bed it hardly did the trick. Benjamin had the last of his clothes off quickly. He piled them on the chair where he hung his suit pants overnight.
    Elena watched him from the edge of the bed.
    â€”Never guess where I found her, he said.
    He disappeared into the walk-in closet. The sound of his voice was husky among suits and gowns.
    â€”In the basement over at Janey and Jim’s. With that creep. Not even a television on. And they’re on the floor. Kid’s got his trousers down—I can see his little white cheeks pumping away. Got his pecker out there and everything.
    The Benjamin’s voice was muffled. The smell of naphtha and dry-cleaning chemicals. She could tell he was nervous.
    â€”He’s only partly on top of her, though. He’s partly on top of her and partly off. She’s still dressed. He’s flopping around like a fish on the deck and she’s just lying there.
    Benjamin poked his head out of the closet now and looked at his wife. She admired what was left of him, couldn’t help it, what was not consumed by uncertainty and heavy drinking and the ravages of adulthood with little exercise. In many ways, he was ugly, scaly, even repulsive. When he smiled, the effect was almost always lewd.