Free Separate Flights by Andre Dubus

knew it, and I knew it. I had waked happy, believing Terry knew it too, and now after her one night she was at the beach with the children, and we were husband and wife again. I sat watching the game. Far off, as though from the streets behind the black and white ball park, I could hear the power mowers.
    After dinner Terry came to the living room where I was reading on the couch. Upstairs the children were watching television.
    â€˜Hank came to the beach.’
    â€˜He found you? On a hot Sunday at Plum Island? My God, the man’s in love.’
    â€˜He says he is.’
    â€˜Really?’
    â€˜Oh, I know it’s just talk, it’s just a line—he wants to see me tonight.’ She was smoking. ‘I wish I hadn’t last night. But I did and it doesn’t seem really right to say yes and then next morning say no, I mean it’s not like I was drunk or something, I knew what I was doing. But I’m scared, Jack.’ She sat on the couch; I moved to make room, and she took my hand. ‘Look at me. What do you really think? Or really feel. You’re not scared of this? People screwing other people?’
    â€˜No, I’m not scared.’
    â€˜Then why am I? When I’m the one who—Jesus.’
    â€˜What did you feel at the beach?’
    â€˜Guilty. Watching my children and talking to him.’
    â€˜Did you tell him you’d meet him?’
    She lowered her eyes and said, ‘Yes.’
    â€˜And now you don’t feel like it because it’s embarrassing to leave the house when I know where you’re going. If I didn’t know, you’d have got out with some excuse. Does Hank know that I know?’
    â€˜I didn’t tell him. It just seemed too much, when we’re all together. Won’t you feel strange? When you see him tomorrow?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. What are you going to do tonight?’
    â€˜I’m going to think about it.’
    She went to the kitchen. I listened to her washing the dishes: she worked very slowly, the sounds of running water and the dull clatter of plate against plate as she put them in the drainer coming farther and farther apart so that I guessed (and rightly) she had done less than half the dishes when I heard her quickly cross the floor and go into the bathroom. She showered fast, she must have been late, then she opened the bathroom door to let the steam out. Late or not, of course she spent a long while now with the tubes and brushes and small bottles of her beauty, which was natural anyway and good, but when people came over or we went out she worked on it. I had always resented that: if a car pulled up in front of the house she fled to the bathroom and gave whoever it was a prettier face than she gave me. But I thought, too, that she gave it to herself. She closed the bathroom closet, ran the lavatory tap a final time, and came out briskly into the bedroom; lying propped on the couch, I looked over the Tolstoy book; she had a towel around her, and I watched her circling the bed, to our closet. She was careful not to look at me. On the way to the mirror she would have to face me or turn her head; so I raised the book and read while she pushed aside hangered dresses, paused, then chose something. I felt her glance as she crossed the room to the full-length mirror. I tried to read, listening to the snapping of the brassiere, the dress slipping over her head and down her body, and the brush strokes on her hair. Then I raised my eyes as she stepped into the living room wearing her yellow dress and small shiny yellow shoes, her hair long and soft, and behind the yellow at her shoulders it was lovely. When I looked at her she opened her purse and dropped in a fresh pack of cigarettes, watching it fall. She had drawn green on her eyelids.
    â€˜Well—’ she said.
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜I’ll do the dishes when I get back.’
    â€˜No sweat.’
    She looked at me, her eyes bright