Telling Time by Austin Wright

Author:Austin Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

MELANIE CAIRO: To Dr. Parch or Dr. Saunders

Hard to distinguish between his grief if he has any and his sickness. Quiet, lethargic, morose as usual. Or do I mean Dr. Saunders, Parch or Saunders in the living room with such a crowd I don’t dare write yet, especially if it’s Saunders not Parch I’m writing to. The distractive question of the other man, this man of last year’s beach house, and me nervous and fearful not of what he would do but of what I would feel. Since last summer I’ve grown to hate the memory, shabby and dirty in retrospect not seen at the time. Ashamed not for infidelity (no longer a useful term, the man soothingly told me) but for cheap excitement and obese emotion. I’ve not been able to expel the image of his secret sticking out like a red carrot through all that civic dignity and control. I couldn’t recall what captivated me. Nothing captivated me. It was an opportunity to experiment on myself, but the instrument was crude.

I was surprised to be so jumpy about meeting him again. But when he arrived yesterday and I saw again the shielded gray look covering so much unsaid interpreting and recalled his hidden carrot of truth, why then Dr. Parch or do I mean Saunders my nervousness vanished and I felt secure.

I was determined that what happened once last summer back of the beach would not repeat this year, certainly not in the middle of grief, nor be mentioned or thought, erased from history as if it never was. I was determined that he conspire with me on this. But tonight as we sit here all these people in the living room and dining room, the young ones playing games, I’ve been aware of his eyes not looking at me knowingly and no longer with contempt if it ever was contempt, and there was the moment by the front door but only for a second as if to create an event. It was about the strain of taking care of my depressed husband, and I felt sympathy projected at me not like a carrot but a flame. So that all evening while I think notes for Dr. Parch I find myself thinking notes for Dr. Saunders about how it could be done again if that were to happen which I vow won’t in the house or the Inn, but would a room at the Motel beyond the harbor be too dangerous, or might a safe wilderness be found along the beach like last summer or an empty beach house not in use at this time of year, and how much time might go unnoticed, what could be done with the husband, how could the wife be distracted? I try to dismiss the sentimental questions (how could you think of it at a time like this) because the fact is, I am thinking of it with him sitting across from me reading a magazine, and remembering we are the in-laws, the invited outsiders.

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