Free Running the Bulls by Cathie Pelletier Page A

barrel of a gun. And the truth was that for the two hours the basketball game was running, or the four hours a golf tournament took to unfold, Ellen only occasionally popped into the living room to beseech him to “do something constructive.” As if watching Greg Norman hit a three-hundred-yard drive or Michael Jordan fly like a goddamn bird through the air wasn’t constructive. “Yeah, yeah,” Howard would mutter, “in a minute.” And then Ellen would be gone and his mind would be back on the game, as if she had never spoken to him at all. And that had been the secret— don’t take Ellen’s nagging personally —that had held his marriage together so nicely for four decades. Saturdays had been splendid, memorable days at the house on Patterson Street, when Howard wasn’t actually out playing golf, or fly-fishing, or canoeing the Bixley River, which was what he planned to do with Eliot that very day. He had promised the boy. But Eliot was now at a friend’s house, enjoying a surprise birthday party that only the moms had known about until an hour before party time. Apparently, little kids and retired cuckolds couldn’t be trusted with such big secrets.
    On the first Saturday of Howard’s estrangement, with a fierce loneliness pulling at his gut, he decided to do something wholly uncharacteristic, a way to mark the beginnings of his new life. So, humming a little Sinatra as he worked, he loaded his laundry into a wicker basket that Patty had left sitting in an upstairs bathroom. Then he hoisted the basket up onto his shoulder and carried it down to the laundry room, where, in a reasonably short period of time, he turned everything in it a light shade of pink. He stood looking down in horror at his favorite white golf shirt, his favorite khaki slacks, pink socks, even pink underwear.
    â€œChrist,” Howard said, as he shoved everything into the dryer, certain that immense heat would cause the pink to evaporate. Ellen had always done the laundry. Not that Howard was one of those husbands who insisted on playing the traditional male role to his wife’s female part. Although he was not considered an extravagant cook, an occasional meatloaf that had a certain dignity to it was known to come out of the oven bearing his seal. Granted, this was only when Ellen was out of town or gone for the evening, but it had happened more than a few times in his years of marriage. Not every man could say the same. And Howard sometimes helped with the dinner dishes if Ellen was especially tired. Occasionally, he even went out of his way to make up their bed, if he rose after Ellen on Sundays. And sometimes he visited the big IGA, if Ellen was sick with a cold or something more serious, to pick up potatoes or a loaf of Italian bread from the deli. A couple of times he had even gone inside a convenience store to buy Ellen a big blue box of Kotex, right in front of the salesclerk and other shoppers. No, Howard was quite sure that it couldn’t be said he was a husband of the Eisenhower era. He had slipped those surly bonds of his 1950s upbringing to become a thoroughly modern man. Once, he had even wept while watching an old black-and-white war movie on television. But, nonetheless, he didn’t do laundry. Not even during that week when Ellen had been galloping around Buffalo with Ben Collins. He and the kids had piled their dirty clothes into hampers and baskets, onto closet floors and available chairs, letting it grow to mountain size for Ellen to tend to when she returned. Howard was glad now that he hadn’t done the laundry that week, and that’s what he was thinking as he loaded the machine with lighter clothes. He remembered to put all whites together, a knowledge he had gleaned from detergent commercials that had leaked their way into his subliminal mind after years of continual bombardment. But his thoughts were so consumed with Ellen’s deception that he had