the doorway. Shelby’s hand was low on her hip—partly a joking sexual gesture, partly a possessive one. “Don’t try to tell me there’s anything you’re afraid of,” Shelby said.
Ben sleeps and sleeps. He often sleeps until ten or eleven. Up there in his bed, sunlight washing over him.
Tom looks again at the box with the ashes in it on the mantel. If there is another life, what if something goes wrong and he is reincarnated as a camel and Ben as a cloud and there is just no way for the two of them to get together? He wants Ben. He wants him now.
The alarm is ringing, so loud it sounds like a million madmen beating tin. Shelby’s feet on the floor. The sunlight shining a rectangle of light through the middle of the room. Shelby will walk through that patch of light as though it were a rug rolled out down the aisle of a church. Six months ago, seven, Tom went to Amanda and Shelby’s wedding.
Shelby is naked, and startled to see him. He stumbles, grabs his brown robe from his shoulder and puts it on, asking Tom what he’s doing there and saying good morning at the same time. “Every goddamn clock in the house is either two minutes slow or five minutes fast,” Shelby says. He hops around on the cold tile in the kitchen, putting water on to boil, pulling his robe tighter around him. “I thought this floor would warm up in summer,” Shelby says, sighing. He shifts his weight from one side to the other, the way a fighter warms up, chafing his big hands.
Amanda comes down. She is wearing a pair of jeans, rolled at the ankles, black high-heeled sandals, a black silk blouse. She stumbles like Shelby. She does not look happy to see Tom. She looks, and doesn’t say anything.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Tom says. He sounds lame. An animal in a trap, trying to keep its eyes calm.
“I’m going into the city,” she says. “Claudia’s having a cyst removed. It’s all a mess. I have to meet her there, at nine. I don’t feel like talking now. Let’s talk tonight. Come back tonight. Or stay today.” Her hands through her auburn hair. She sits in a chair, accepts the coffee Shelby brings.
“More?” Shelby says to Tom. “You want something more?”
Amanda looks at Tom through the steam rising from her coffee cup. “I think that we are all dealing with this situation very well,” she says. “I’m not sorry I gave you the key. Shelby and I discussed it, and we both felt that you should have access to the house. But in the back of my mind I assumed that you would use the key—I had in mind more . . . emergency situations.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” Shelby says. “Now I would like it if I didn’t feel that there was going to be a scene to start things off this morning.”
Amanda sighs. She seems as perturbed with Shelby as she is with Tom. “And if I can say something without being jumped on,” she says to Shelby, “because, yes, you
“We saw seven deer running through the woods yesterday,” Shelby says.
“Oh, cut it out, Shelby,” Amanda says.
“Your problems I’m trying to deal with, Amanda,” Shelby says. “A little less of the rough tongue, don’t you think?”
Inez has pinned a sprig of phlox in her hair, and she walks as though she feels pretty. The first time Tom saw Inez, she was working in her sister’s garden—actually, standing in the garden in bare feet, with a long cotton skirt sweeping the ground. She was holding a basket heaped high with iris and daisies. She was nineteen years old and had just arrived in the United States. That year, she lived with her sister and her sister’s husband, Metcalf—his friend Metcalf, the craziest man at the ad agency. Metcalf began to study photography, just to take pictures of Inez. Finally his wife got jealous and asked Inez to leave. She had trouble finding a job, and Amanda liked her and felt sorry for her, and she persuaded Tom to have her come live with them, after she had Ben. Inez came, bringing boxes of pictures of herself, one suitcase, and a pet gerbil that died her first night in the house. All the next day, Inez cried, and Amanda put her arms around her. Inez always seemed like a member of the family, from the first.
By the edge of the pond where Tom is walking with Inez, there is a black dog, panting, staring up at a Frisbee. Its master raises the Frisbee, and the dog stares as though transfixed by a beam of light from heaven. The Frisbee flies, curves, and the dog has it as it dips down.
“I’m going to ask Amanda if Ben can come live with me,” Tom says to Inez.
“She’ll never say yes,” Inez says.
“What do you think Amanda would think if I kidnapped Ben?” Tom says.
“Ben’s adjusting,” she says. “That’s a bad idea.”
“You think I’m putting you on? I’d kidnap you with him.”
“She’s not a bad person,” Inez says. “You think about upsetting her too much. She has problems, too.”
“Since when do you defend your cheap employer?”
His son has picked up a stick. The dog, in the distance, stares. The dog’s owner calls its name: “Sam!” The dog snaps his head around. He bounds through the grass, head raised, staring at the Frisbee.
“I should have gone to college,” Inez says.
“College?” Tom says. The dog is running and running. “What would you have studied?”
Inez swoops down in back of Ben, picks him up and squeezes him. He struggles, as though he wants to be put down, but when Inez bends over he holds on to her. They come to where Tom parked the car, and Inez lowers Ben to the ground.
“Remember to stop at the market,” Inez says. “I’ve got to get something for dinner.”
“She’ll be full of sushi and Perrier. I’ll bet they don’t want dinner.”
“You’ll want dinner,” she says. “I should get something.”
