Standing Fast by Harvey Swados

Author:Harvey Swados [Swados, Harvey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1483-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-28T23:11:00+00:00

2. JOE

“IS MRS. LINK HOME?” Standing in the doorway of the apartment, flight bag in his hand, valise at his feet, Joe peered into the suppertime twilight from which came only the sound of very familiar Mozart. The Haffner Symphony?

The music stopped. Then her voice, as if he had never ceased to hear it. “Yes, who is it?”

“Come see.”

Her bare feet slapped, then pattered more thinly on the linoleum as she began to run. He dropped the bag, thinking, she kicked off her shoes to cook supper, but thought stopped as she appeared before him, stunned, staring.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” he demanded. “Maybe put your arms around me?”

Seemingly she could not move. He stepped forward and took hold of her. She was so tall! He felt all of her, the softness pressed to him, the droop of her shoulder blades, fluttering like newly folded wings. She did not cry, but gripped the front of his shirt in her clenched fists as if to stop the world from rocking. He smoothed her hair with his hand and put his lips to the part, inhaling the fragrance of lilac, closing his eyes as the circles, worlds away, flashed and whirled dizzily.

At last she said, lips to his chest, pressing the words to him, “Why did you come without notice? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He held her back from him and raised her face. “Sy picked me up at the airport. I wanted our reunion to be private. Right here.”

“That’s so like you! All these months and months and months, and you’d make me wait an extra hour.”

“Isn’t it worth it?”

“I don’t know what to say first.”

He knew what she meant. They were strangers once again, maybe more so than when they had first met, in British Columbia. Because her voice sounded strange to him, his own rang falsely, as if he were listening to himself in a record booth. If she would cry, perhaps, the way wives were supposed to—but that was not her way.

Stupidly he said, not having worked it out in his mind in advance, “Let’s go to bed.”

To his astonishment she did not demur. “All right,” she said. Releasing herself from his grasp, she moved about in her bare feet, drawing the blinds, turning off the gas flame on the stove, switching off the record player, whose hum had suddenly grown loud in the darkened quiet apartment. Then she walked into the bedroom and drew her dress over her head.

There was something somnambulistic about it. Or coldblooded. They had not even kissed, and now, like a whore and her customer, they were disrobing in opposite corners of the room, without touching each other. In fact they were not even looking at each other, as if what they were doing was wrong, or illicit.

Joe saw just a flash of his wife’s body as she bent over to pull back the coverlet, then slid swiftly between the sheets. He stepped out of his shorts, pulled off his T shirt, and slipped in beside her.

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