The Astral, or, Till the Day I Die. V. J. Banis

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СКАЧАТЬ blinked, surprised by her vehemence, and heartened too. When she had interviewed her before, in the hospital, Catherine Desmond had been like a zombie, all her feelings locked away somewhere inside. Anger was good, in Chang’s opinion. It was often a first step in recovery.

      “It’s a date. I promise you, you’ll see them die,” she said with a grim smile. She took a card from her wallet and handed it to Catherine. “Meantime, if you think of anything...sometimes memory does funny things, you know, you’re reading a book or walking down a street, and the most trivial thing will trigger something in your mind. If you think of anything, anything at all, call me. Day or night.”

      * * * *

      Catherine had planned to go into the office for the afternoon, but now she changed her mind. Roby Chang’s visit had unnerved her. She called in and made her apologies, was embarrassed by how quickly, how understandingly they were received.

      The free time left her restless, however. She sat at the piano, picked listlessly at a Chopin prelude. Jack McKenzie’s yellow roses, a new bouquet of them, sat in their usual place atop the piano. Walter never failed to glower at them when he saw them, but he kept his objections to himself.

      Her out-of-practice fingers hit a wrong note. She slammed her hand down on the keyboard, creating a discordant cacophony, and got up, banging the lid down on the piano and making the roses tremble nervously.

      She went to the window and glanced out, and saw again the sorry state of the back yard. Despite the cold and a gentle rain, she donned a parka, pulled the hood over her head, and went out to do some gardening.

      A blue jay scolded her as she pulled up dead pansies and primroses with violent yanks. She imagined herself ripping out the hearts of the men who had murdered Becky.

      Later, muddy and exhausted, she took a shower and thought about Walter. She had been cold, unyielding with him, though he too had grief to bear and, worse yet, a burden of guilt as well.

      She had ignored her mother, too. The sorry truth was, she had been so wrapped up in her own suffering she had given not a thought to the suffering of others. She lashed herself with the recognition of her self-absorption.

      Since her return from the hospital, she had been sleeping in Becky’s room. That night she returned to her own bed, to Walter.

      He welcomed her into his arms, and after several long moments of silent embrace, he tried dutifully to make love to her. It was a failure on both their parts. After what seemed an eternity of writhing and rubbing, he heaved a deep sigh and rolled off of her.

      “I’m sorry,” he said.

      For a reply, she took his hand and gave it a forgiving squeeze. Later, when he began to snore gently in his sleep, she went back to Becky’s room.

      Lying there in the darkness, the futility of their attempt at sex stayed with her. Yet now that she was in another bed, another room, now that she considered it at a safe distance, she realized that nothing sexual had happened between them for a long while, even before. She had not minded, had welcomed the absence, she supposed, and so had been willing to overlook it, had scarcely even been conscious of it. If she had been able to see the future, she might well have considered another child...but who could possibly have foreseen what happened.

      She did not find it flattering to face the truth of what she had done: it hadn’t been only out of consideration for Walter, for their marriage, that she had returned to his bed. Far back in a corner of her mind, she had thought of replacing what had been lost. In a way, she was glad the attempt had been unsuccessful. That wasn’t the right motivation to bring a child into the world. Becky had been precious to her, and another child might well be too, without being a “replacement.” Anyway, if she were going to be truly honest with herself, Walter was no longer the man she would have chosen for a father.

      She got up and went into the bathroom—not the master bath, which was too close to where he slept, but the one across the hall from Becky’s room. The door closed, all the lights on, she shed her robe and took a long, hard look at herself in the mirror.

      She had never been beautiful, not even as a young woman, but she had known without conceit (and with a probably too immodest pleasure) that she was attractive to the opposite sex. That, however, had been years ago. Was she still? She honestly didn’t know. Walter didn’t count. She had not for many years thought of him in terms of sex, opposite or otherwise. And, it seemed, the same with him.

      She had a good complexion, what they used to call “peaches and cream,” and eyes the color of old cognac, with gold flecks that glinted when she was angry or excited. She was thirty-two. Well preserved, she thought with all due modesty. Until this last year, she had been careful of diet and exercise, and though no doubt some softening had set in during that time, she could not yet detect any evidence of it.

      Or not much evidence. When she got on the scales, she saw that she had gained a full five pounds. Too much time abed, not enough exercise.

      Even so, she didn’t exactly look chubby. Would a man still find her attractive? Would—the time for pretense in your life is past, my girl, she told herself—would Jack McKenzie still find her attractive?

      Memories crowded in upon her, sweet, stinging. She had been seventeen when they had met. Eighteen when they first made love—the night of her eighteenth birthday, to be exact. His scruples, not hers. Certainly not hers. Despite her most ardent efforts to convince him otherwise, he had stubbornly insisted that he wanted her to be an adult when it happened. “I’m not robbing any cradles, my love,” he insisted. He was eight years older than she. Eight years wiser, she could see now, though at the time she had seen it only as sheer pigheadedness.

      Pigheadedness that somehow allowed her to convince herself that he didn’t love her when he said they would have to wait to get married.

      “Why do you have to go away, to the Middle East?” she demanded. “You could make a writing career here, couldn’t you?”

      “Because I plan to be a war correspondent.” He had been so calm, so reasonable, that it only enraged her all the more. “Iraq is where the war is going to be, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia. That’s where I have to be.”

      “Then I’ll go with you.”

      The tolerant smile he gave her infuriated her. “There’s no way I would take you there. The danger, the hardship—no, my darling, you will wait here until I come back. Assuming I do come back. There’s always that chance.”

      “And if I won’t wait?”

      “Kat, don’t be silly. If it will make you feel better, we’ll get married the first day I step on U.S. soil again, I promise.”

      “Why don’t we get married now, and you go do your Mid-East thing, and I’ll wait here for you. We have a week for a honeymoon, surely, before you have to leave.”

      There was that damned smile again. “Suppose I didn’t come back. Suppose I left you pregnant. What family do you have? Your mother, who is caring for a bed-ridden husband at the present? And I have a cousin in Oregon, who probably barely remembers me. Do you imagine I want the woman I love left with that sort of burden to bear alone? You’d be middle-aged by the time you worked through it all. No, you’re young, you’re single, I want you to enjoy your life, have fun. You’re still a kid. Go out with other guys if you feel like it. There’ll be plenty of time to work on marriage when I get back.”

      He СКАЧАТЬ