Free Separate Flights by Andre Dubus Page A

with ambivalence: love or affection or perhaps only nostalgia and, cutting through that tenderness, an edge of hatred. Maybe she too knew the marriage was forever changed and she blamed me; or maybe it wasn’t the marriage at all but herself she worried about, and she was going out now into the night, loosed from her moorings, and she saw me as the man with the axe who had cut her adrift onto the moonless bay. My face was hot. She turned abruptly and went upstairs and I listened to her voice with the children. She lingered. Then she came downstairs and called to me from the kitchen: ‘The movie should be over around eleven.’ I read again. I could have been reading words in Latin. Then the screen opened and she was back in the kitchen, my heart dropping a long way; she went through the bathroom into the bedroom, the car keys jingled as she swept them from the dresser, and my heart rose and she was gone. After a while I was able to read and I turned back the pages I had read without reading; I read for twenty minutes until I was sure Hank was gone too, then I went to the bedroom and phoned Edith.
    â€˜ “Ivan Ilyitch’s life was most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” ’
    â€˜Who said that?’
    She wasn’t literary but that didn’t matter; I loved her for that too and anyway I didn’t know what did matter with a woman except to find one who was clean and peaceful and affectionate and then love her.
    â€˜Tolstoy. Our lives aren’t so simple and ordinary.’
    â€˜Is she gone too?’
    â€˜A movie. That’s what she tells me so the kids can hear repeated what she told them. A new twist to the old lying collusion of husband and wife against their children. But she also told me the truth.’
    â€˜He’s going to see some Western. He says they relax him and help him write next day. I hate Westerns.’
    â€˜I love them. There’s one on the tube tonight and I’ll watch it with the kids.’
    â€˜We’ll have to do something about these cars.’
    â€˜Maybe a car pool of sorts.’
    â€˜Dear Mother, please buy me a car so I can see my lover while Hank sees his.’
    â€˜Is she really that rich?’
    â€˜She’s that rich. I miss you.’
    â€˜Tomorrow. Eleven?’
    â€˜I’ll go shopping.’
    â€˜I’ll go to the library.’
    â€˜You use that too much. Some day she’ll walk over and see if you’re there.’
    â€˜She’s too lazy. Anyway, if things keep on like this maybe I can stop making excuses.’
    â€˜Don’t count on it.’
    â€˜Being a cuckold’s all right, but it’s boring. Get a sitter and take a taxi.’
    â€˜Go watch the movie with your children.’
    Terry hadn’t put her beauty things away; they were on the lavatory and the toilet tank, and I replaced tops on bottles and put all of it into the cabinet. I went to the foot of the stairs and called.
    â€˜What!’ When their voices were raised they sounded alike; I decided it was Sean.
    â€˜Turn to Channel Seven!’
    â€˜What’s on!’
    â€˜Cowboys, man! Tough hombre cowboys!’
    â€˜Cowboys! Can we watch it!’
    â€˜Right!’
    â€˜All of it!’
    â€˜Yeah! All of it!’
    â€˜Are you gonna watch it!’
    â€˜I am! I’ll be up in a while!’
    I got a pot out of the dishwater and washed it for popcorn. Once Sean called down that it had started and I said I knew, I knew, I could hear the horses’ hooves and I’d be up evermore ricky-tick. There were Cokes hidden in the cupboard so the kids wouldn’t drink them all in one day. I poured them over ice and opened a tall bottle of Pickwick ale and got a beer mug and brought everything up on a tray.
    â€˜Hey neat-o,’ Natasha said.
    â€˜Popcorn!’
    I pulled the coffee table in front of the couch and put the tray on it.
    â€˜Sit between us,’ Natasha