Free Something Is Out There by Richard Bausch Page B

breasts, her inner thighs. She cleaned her teeth again, and looked at her mouth.
    Finally she got into her jeans, blouse, flats, pinned her hairback, and went into the bedroom to stare out the window. She saw Phyllis come out and look over. Phyllis walked across the street and knocked on her door.
    Diana took her time going to answer it. When she did, Phyllis went by her into the living room. “I’m sleepy. I just had a nap, and I’m exhausted and the baby’s asleep. I can’t stay. Tell me who he is.”
    “He’s—he wanted to sell me a direct TV network plan.”
    Phyllis stared. “Come on—it’s not your Internet friend?”
    “No,” Diana said through a tightening at her chest. “Nothing so exciting.”
    “I wish it was—I’d tell you to send him over to me. I’m going batshit over there.”
    “Can’t help you. Next time I have a Jehovah’s Witness, you’re first on the list.”
    “Don’t be so high and mighty.”
    “I’m just kidding.” She held the door for her friend, realizing that she wished to extricate herself, not just for the moment, but for good. Phyllis could find some other woman to be her neighborhood sounding board. In the next instant, as Phyllis stepped by her out onto the little stoop, the realization arrived that this feeling was an aspect of something else: everything was changing. She had wanted so badly only to taste fully the passion that she believed was in her nature.
    “I’m going to reserve a bed on the psychiatric ward,” Phyllis said. “If
you’re
not going to provide any excitement. I thought there might be something to do this afternoon other than watching the fucking idiot box and cable.”
    At last, alone, she lay on the sofa and tried to drift off. It would be all right to be asleep when Warren and the children arrived. But sleep eluded her.
    The children came in first, a welter of noise and argument. Warren was still out at the car, collecting their book bags, and a raincoat that Lauren had left at school, last week. He came up to the door with it draped over his arm, carrying their bags.
    “You should make them carry their own,” she told him.
    “I don’t mind.” He put the bags down on the bench in the hall, and embraced her. His arms were thick, and she let her hands roam over the broad shoulders of her husband, breathing the familiar bay rum and talcum odor of him. The girls were already in their room, going on about something. Even when they were agreeable these days, it sounded anyway like an argument—the voices rising, competing for attention.
    “You have a good day?” he said.
    “Ordinary,” she said. “Nothing new.”
    He walked into the living room, removing his sport coat. She went into the kitchen and started dinner—baked chicken and a salad, and creamed corn. She worked quietly, hearing the sounds of her house. The girls knew they were to do their homework as soon as they got home; in the evenings he was always there to help them if they’d run into any problems; he would check on them, taking small breaks from reading his paper. He read the paper front to back every day, and indeed one of the pleasures they had always enjoyed as a couple was reading the Sunday paper together, and sipping coffee, talking over the articles they read.
    He came into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water.
    She wanted to make love to him. She looked at the fine creases of the muscles in his forearm and thought of taking hold of it, pulling him toward her. But she could never be that forward with him. She had always to make him believe it was his idea. She crossed behind him and patted his upper back, then leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Long day?”
    “Not too bad,” he said, heading into the living room with his water.
    Dinner was quiet, unusually so. The girls whispered to each other, the terms of some game they were engaged in. They had more homework after dinner—work that required them to be on the Internet. They excused themselves and