What made it even more terrible is that they had quarreled just before he left home, and had parted without making it up.
She had been sitting on the couch, wearing a denim work shirt that belonged to him and not much else, her long, suntanned legs stretched out in front, her fine fair hair lying across her shoulders like a shawl. She was reading a magazine. Her breasts were normally quite small, but lately they had swollen. He felt an urge to touch them, and he thought: Why not? So he slid his hand inside the shirt and touched her nipple. She looked up at him and smiled lovingly, then went on with her reading.
He kissed the top of her head, then sat down next to her. She had astonished him right from the start. They were both shy at first, but soon after they returned from their honeymoon holiday and started living together here in the old farmhouse, she had become wildly uninhibited.
First she wanted to make love with the light on. Eddie felt awkward about it, but he consented, and he kind of liked it, although he felt bashful. Then he noticed that she did not lock the door when she took a bath. After that, he felt foolish about locking the door himself, so he did the same as she did, and one day she just walked in with no clothes on and got right in the tub with him! Eddie had never felt so embarrassed in his life. No woman had seen him naked since he was about four years old. He got an enormous hard-on just watching Carol- Ann wash her underarms, and he covered his dick with a washcloth until she laughed him out of it.
She started walking around the farmhouse in various states of undress. The way she was now, this was nothing. She was practically overdressed by her standards. You could only just see a little white triangle of cotton at the top of her legs where the shirt did not quite cover her panties. She was normally much worse. He would be making coffee in the kitchen and she would come in wearing nothing but her underwear and start toasting muffins; or he would be shaving and she would appear in her panties, with no brassiere, and just brush her teeth like that; or she would come into the bedroom stark naked with his breakfast on a tray. He wondered if she was “oversexed;” he had heard people use that term. But he also liked her to be that way. He liked it a lot. He had never dreamed he would have a beautiful wife who would walk around his house undressed. He felt so lucky.
Living with her for a year had changed him. He had gotten so uninhibited that he would walk naked from the bedroom to the bathroom; sometimes he did not even put on his pajamas before getting into bed; once he even took her here in the living room, right on that couch..
He still wondered whether there was something psychologically abnormal about this kind of behavior, but he had decided that it did not matter: he and Carol-Ann could do anything they liked. When he accepted that, he felt like a bird let out of a cage. It was incredible; it was wonderful; it was like being in heaven.
He sat beside her, saying nothing, just enjoying being with her and smelling the mild breeze coming in from the woods through the open windows. His bag was packed and in a few minutes he was leaving for Port Washington. Carol-Ann had left Pan American—she could not live in Maine and work in New York—and she had taken a job in a store in Bangor. Eddie wanted to talk to her about that before he left.
Carol-Ann looked up from Life magazine and said: “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“But you’re going to, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “How did you know?”
“Eddie, you know I can hear when your brain is working. What is it?”
He put his big, blunt hand on her belly and felt the slight swelling there. “I want you to quit your job. ”
“It’s too early—”
“It’s okay. We can afford it. And I want you to take real good care of yourself. ”
“I’ll take care of myself. I’ll quit work when I need to.”
He felt hurt. “I thought you’d be pleased. Why do you want to go on?”
“Because we need the money and I have to have something to do.”
“I told you, we can afford it.”
“I’d get bored.”
“Most wives don’t work. ”
She raised her voice. “Eddie, why are you trying to tie me down?”
He did not want to tie her down, and the suggestion infuriated him. He said: “Why are you so determined to go against me?”
“I’m not going against you! I just don’t want to sit here like a lumper’s helper! ”
“Don’t you have stuff to do?”
“What?”
“Knit baby clothes, make preserves, take naps—”
She was scornful. “Oh, for heaven’s sake—”
“What’s wrong with that, for Christ’s sake?” he said crossly.
“There’ll be plenty of time for all that when the baby comes. I’d like to enjoy my last few weeks of freedom. ”
Eddie felt humiliated, but he was not sure how it had happened. He wanted to get out of there. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got a train to catch.”
Carol-Ann looked sad. “Don’t be angry,” she said in a conciliatory tone.
But he was angry. “I guess I just don’t understand you,” he said with irritation.
“I hate to be fenced in.”
“I was trying to be nice.” He stood up and went into the kitchen, where his uniform jacket hung on a peg. He felt foolish and wrong-footed. He had set out to do something generous and she saw it as an imposition.
She brought his suitcase from the bedroom and handed it to him when he had his jacket on. She turned up her face and he kissed her briefly.
“Don’t go out the door mad at me,” she said.
But he did.
And now he stood in a garden in a foreign country, thousands of miles from her, with a heart as heavy as lead, wondering if he would ever see his Carol-Ann again.
For the first time in her life, Nancy Lenehan was putting on weight.
She stood in her suite at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, beside a pile of luggage that was waiting to be taken on board the S.S. Orania, and gazed, horrified, into the mirror.
She was neither beautiful nor plain, but she had regular features—a straight nose, straight dark hair and a neat chin—and she looked attractive when she dressed carefully, which was most of the time. Today she was wearing a featherweight flannel suit by Paquin, in cerise, with a gray silk blouse. The jacket was fashionably tight- waisted, and it was this that had revealed to her that she was gaining weight. When she fastened the buttons of the jacket, a slight but unmistakable crease appeared, and the lower buttons pulled against the buttonholes.
There was only one explanation for this. The waist of the jacket was smaller than the waist of Mrs. Lenehan.
It was probably a result of having lunched and dined at all the best restaurants in Paris throughout August. She sighed. She would go on a diet for the entire transatlantic crossing. When she reached New York, she would have her figure back.
She had never had to go on a diet before. The prospect did not trouble her: although she liked good food,
