with dazed eyes at the ceiling. She had been changing the living room furniture around, and everything was pulled out of position, giving the room an odd disjointed look.
Whatever was wrong with her had advanced during the night, and her appearance was bad enough to cut through his daze like a sharp knife. She was still in her robe and it had split up to mid-thigh. Her legs were the color of marble; all the tan she had picked up that summer on their vacation had faded out of them. Her hands moved like ghosts. Her mouth gaped, as if her lungs could not get enough air, and he noticed the odd prominence of her teeth but thought nothing of it. It could have been the light.
‘Margie? Honey?’
She tried to answer, couldn’t, and real fear shot through him. He got up to call the doctor.
He was turning to the phone when she said, ‘No… no.’ The word was repeated between a harsh gasp for air. She had struggled up to a sitting position, and the whole sun-silent house was filled with her rasping struggle for breath.
‘Pull me… help me… the sun is so hot… ’
He went to her and picked her up, shocked by the lightness of his burden. She seemed to weigh no more than a bundle of sticks.
‘… sofa… ’
He laid her on it ‘ with her back propped against the armrest. She was out of the patch of sun that fell in a square through the front window and onto the rug, and her breath seemed to come a little easier. She closed her eyes for a moment, and again he was impressed by the smooth whiteness of her teeth in contrast to her lips. He felt an urge to kiss her.
‘Let me call the doctor,’ he said.
‘No. I’m better. The sun was… burning me. Made me feel faint. Better now.’ A little color had come back into her cheeks.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m okay.’
‘You’ve been working too hard, honey.’
‘Yes,’ she said passively. Her eyes were listless.
He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at it. ‘We’ve got to snap out of this, Margie. We’ve got to. You look… ’ He paused, not wanting to hurt her.
‘I look awful,’ she said. ‘I know. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror before I went to bed last night, and I hardly seemed to be there. For a minute I… ’ A smile touched her lips. ‘I thought I could see the tub behind me. Like there was only a little of myself left and it was… oh, so
‘I want Dr Reardon to look at you.’
But she seemed not to hear. ‘I’ve had the most lovely dream the last three or four nights, Tony. So real. Danny comes to me in the dream. He says, 'Mommy, Mommy, I’m so glad to be home!' And he says… says… ’
‘What does he say?’ he asked her gently.
‘He says… that he’s my baby again. My own son, at my breast again. And I give him to suck and… and then a feeling of sweetness with an undertone of bitterness, so much like it was before he was weaned but after he was beginning to get teeth and he would nip-oh, this must sound
‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
He knelt beside her and she put her arms around his neck and wept weakly. Her arms were cold. ‘No doctor, Tony, please. I’ll rest today.’
‘All right,’ he said. Giving in to her made him feel uneasy.
‘It’s such a lovely dream, Tony,’ she said, speaking against his throat. The movement of her lips, the muffled hardness of her teeth beneath them, was amazingly sensual. He was getting an erection. ‘I wish I could have it again tonight.’
‘Maybe you will,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘Maybe you will at that.’
4
‘My God, don’t you look good,’ Ben said.
Against the hospital world of solid whites and anemic greens, Susan Norton looked very good indeed. She was wearing a bright yellow blouse with black vertical stripes and a short blue denim skirt.
‘You, too,’ she said, and crossed the room to him.
He kissed her deeply, and his hand slid to the warm curve of her hip and rubbed.
‘Hey,’ she said, breaking the kiss. ‘They kick you out for that.’
‘Not me.’
‘No, me.’
‘They looked at each other.
‘I love you, Ben.’
‘I love you, too.’
