Lady of the Snakes by Rachel Pastan

Author:Rachel Pastan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780547541242
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2009-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

That night, after putting Maisie to bed, Jane went downstairs where Billy was watching the Bulls game. She sat beside him on the old brown sofa. “What’s the score?” she asked.

“Bulls up by two.”

“Close game.”

Billy said nothing. The light from the television flickered across his face so she could see only intermittently how tense and unhappy he looked.

“Want a beer?” Jane asked.

Billy glanced over at her, surprised. “Okay,” he said. “Sure.”

Jane got up, went into the kitchen, came back with an opened beer. She handed it to Billy.

“Thanks,” Billy said.

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re not having one?”

“No.” Jane pulled her legs up under her, turned her face to the television.

There was a pause. Jane tried to follow the game. Then Billy said, “Since when are you that kind of wife?”

Jane looked at him again. He looked like someone she used to know a long time ago. “What kind of wife?” she asked.

“The kind who gets up to get her husband a beer.”

“I’m the same kind of wife I’ve always been,” she said. “What kind do you want?”

The game went to commercial. Billy shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re different.”

“How, exactly?” Jane asked. She was curious.

Billy shrugged stiffly. “I think you used to be happier. Before,” he said.

Before? Jane thought. Before what? Before Maisie was born? Before they were married? Before they moved to Madison and she had a job and he didn’t? Suddenly she was crying. It was all too much for her: Maisie’s illness and Billy’s coldness and Masha’s letter and her own seeming inability to do anything right. She hadn’t even managed to finish reading the letter! Sigelman, she was sure, would never have left the way she had. Tears slid down her face.

Billy, who could never bear to see anyone in pain, put his arms loosely around her. Jane leaned into his chest and wept. “I’m sorry,” she said. She couldn’t stop crying. His chest was solid, and she would have known his smell anywhere. She wrapped her arms around him and held him tight, and he fell back against the cushions, and she lay on top of him and began to kiss him. She kissed his face, his stubbly cheeks, and the hollows beneath his eyes. She kissed his ear and felt him sigh involuntarily as she breathed into it, felt the hardening inside his jeans. She slipped her hands under his shirt. His skin was warm. She pulled his face around and kissed his mouth. His lips opened for her, his teeth grazed her teeth.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Billy whispered.

Jane reached down to find his zipper. His penis pulsed in her fingers and he groaned and reached inside her blouse.

“Jane,” he said urgently. “Let’s go up to bed.”

She knew what he was thinking. Felicia could walk in any time, but Jane didn’t care. She slid her skirt up to her waist and pulled her underwear off, and at last Billy stopped talking.

But afterward, when she lay with her head cradled on his chest, he sat up and gently pushed her off.

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