I went past her to the kitchen. There were three bottles of Catamount beer in behind some cartons of low-fat lemon yogurt sweetened with aspartame. I got a bottle of beer out and opened it and drank from the bottle. On the stove, a pot of water was coming to a boil. I put the bottle down and tipped it a little and Pearl slurped a little beer from it.
“You don’t like it when I ask where you’ve been,” Susan said.
I shrugged.
“I don’t mean it in any censorious way,” Susan said.
“I know.” I wiped the bottle mouth off with my hand and drank a little more beer. “I have lived all my life, nearly, in circumstances where I went where I would and did what I did and accounted to no one.”
“Even as a boy?”
“My father and my uncles, once I was old enough to go out alone, didn’t ask where I’d been.”
“But two people who live with one another, who share a life… It is a reasonable question.”
“I know,” I said. “Which is why I don’t say anything.”
“But you do,” Susan said. “Your whole body resents the question. The way you hold your head when you answer, the way you roll your shoulders.”
“Betrayed,” I said, “by my expressive body.”
“I’m afraid so,” Susan said.
She held her gaze on me. Her huge dark eyes were serious. Her mouth showed the little lines at the corner that showed only when she was angry.
“Suze, I’ve lived alone all my adult life. Now I’m cohabitating in a large house in Cambridge with a yard and a dog.”
“You love that dog,” Susan said.
“Of course I do. And I love you. But it is an adjustment.”
She kept her gaze on my face another moment and then she smiled and put her hand on my cheek and leaned forward, bending from the waist as she always did, a perfect lady, and kissed me softly, but not hastily, on the mouth.
“I’m having pasta and broccoli for supper,” she said. “Would you care for some?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’ll drink a couple of beers and then maybe make a sandwich or something and watch the Celtics game.”
“Fine,” Susan said.
She cut the tops off the broccoli and threw the stalks away. Then she separated the flowerets and piled them up on her cutting board. I sat on a stool opposite her and watched.
“You could peel those stalks and freeze them,” I said. “Be great for making a nice soup when you felt like it.”
Susan looked at me as if I had begun speaking in tongues.
“In my entire life,” Susan said, “I have never, ever felt like making a nice soup.”
Susan put some whole-wheat pasta in the pot, watched while it came back to a boil again, and tossed in her broccoli. It came to a second boil and she reached over and set the timer on her stove. While it cooked she tossed herself a large salad with some shaved carrots and slices of yellow squash and a lot of lettuce.
“Susan,” I said, “you’re cooking. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you cooking.”
“We’ve done a lot of cooking together,” Susan said. “Holidays, things like that.”
“Yeah. But this is just cooking supper,” I said. “It’s very odd to see you cooking supper.”
“Actually I kind of like cooking for myself,” Susan said. “I can have what I want and cook it the way I want to and not be subject to suggestions, or complaints, or derision-even if I throw away broccoli stalks.”
“Actually I throw them away too,” I said. “After I’ve peeled them and frozen them and left them in the freezer for a year.”
“See,” Susan said, “I’ve eliminated two steps in the process.”
She stirred her pasta and broccoli around once in the pot with a wooden spoon and got out a pale mauve plastic colander and put it in the sink.
“I have been talking to a woman I know who works with the gangs,” she said.
“Oh?”
“She would be willing to talk with you. Not the television woman, just you. And Hawk if he wishes.”
“Social worker?” I said. Susan shook her head.
“No, she’s a teacher. And after school she spends her time on the street. It’s what she does. It’s her life.”
“She black?”
“No.”
“And the kids tolerate her?”
“They trust her,” Susan said. “You want to talk?”
