His lovemaking was as it usually was, quick and hard, but he was not vicious. He did not hurt her intentionally, and tonight, for perhaps the tenth or eleventh time since they had been married, she had a climax. She let herself go to him, eyes closed, feeling the shelf of his chin dig into the top of her head. She stifled the cry that rose to her lips. It would have made him suspicious if she had cried out. She was not sure he really knew that what always happened at the end for men sometimes happened for women too.
Not long after (and still an hour before Brett came home from the Bergerons) he left her, not telling her where he was going. She surmised it was down to Gary Pervier’s, where the drinking would start. She lay in bed and wondered if what she had done and what she had promised could ever be worth it. Tears tried to come and she drove them back. She lay hot-eyed and straight in bed, and just before Brett came in, his arrival announced by Cujo’s barks and the slam of the back-door screen, the moon rose in all its silvery, detached glory. Moon doesn’t care, Charity thought, but the thought brought her no comfort.
“What is it?” Donna asked.
Her voice was dull, almost defeated. The two of them were sitting in the living room. Vic had not gotten home until nearly Tad’s bedtime, and that was now half an hour past He was sleeping in his room upstairs, the Monster Words tacked up by his bed, the closet door firmly shut.
Vic got up and crossed to the window, which now looked out only on darkness. She knows, he thought glumly. Not the fine tuning, maybe, but she’s getting a pretty clear picture. All the way home he had tried to decide if he should confront her with it, lance the boil, try living with the laudable pus . . . or if he should just deep-six it. After leaving Deering Oaks he had torn the letter up, and on his way home up 302 he had fed the scraps out the window. Litterbug Trenton, he thought. And now the choice had been taken out of his hands. He could see her pale reflection in the dark glass, her face a white circle in yellow lamplight.
He turned toward her, having absolutely no idea what he was going to say.
He knows. Donna was thinking.
It was not a new thought, not by now, because the last three hours had been the longest three of her whole life. She had heard the knowledge in his voice when he called to say he would be home late. At first there had been panic—the raw, fluttering panic of a bird trapped in a garage. The thought had been in italics followed by comic-book exclamation points: He knows! He knows! He KNOWS!! She had gotten Tad his supper in a fog of fear, trying to see what might logically happen next, but she was unable. I’ll wash the dishes next, she thought. Then dry them. Then put them away. Then read Tad some stories. Then I’ll just sail off the edge of the world.
Panic had been superseded by guilt. Terror had followed the guilt Then a kind of fatalistic apathy had settled in as certain emotional circuits quietly shut themselves down. The apathy was even tinged by a certain relief. The secret was out She wondered if Steve had done it, or if Vic had guessed on his own. She rather thought it had been Steve, but it didn’t really matter. There was also relief that Tad was in bed, safely asleep. But she wondered what sort of morning he would wake up to. And that thought brought her full circle to her original panicky fear again. She felt sick, lost
He turned toward her from the window and said, “I got a letter today. An unsigned letter.”
He couldn’t finish. He crossed the room again, restlessly, and she found herself thinking what a handsome man he was, and that it was too bad he was going gray so early. It looked good on some young men, but on Vie it was just going to make him look prematurely old and—
—and what was she thinking about his hair for? It wasn’t his hair she had to worry about, was it?
Very softly, still hearing the shake in her voice, she said everything that was salient, spitting it out like some horrible