“Don’t thank me. God. Be with your family. I’m going to combine the classes until you get back.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, hon.”
Knox hung up the phone. She bent at the waist and reached toward her feet in an attempt to stretch her legs. Her nose grazed her skirt just above her knees; she inhaled the familiar smell of her detergent and briefly missed the swan, reminded of its body at rest, piled onto itself. She felt suddenly irritated with Ned. Why did he have to put her in a position to disappoint him, when things between them worked well as they were? She exhaled and reached a bit farther, extending the tips of her fingers as far as they would go. She would call him later, and hopefully the sameness she depended on would be restored. She kept longing out of her mind and thought of diving, of falling off the tip of a board in a tight pike, unfurling the length of her body to straight, slipping into water that way.
BRUCE HAD STOOD outside the window of the thrift shop at St. Luke’s Church. He had pretended to eye the plaid windbreakers, battered lamp shades, beaded and misshapen evening bags (why did a church thrift shop, geared to the poor, look so crowded with sequined purses, he wondered) that hung on the other side of the glass.
Behind him, Hudson Street pumped with traffic. To his left stood the iron gate that marked the entrance to the church garden. If he moved through the gate and took the path that wound around behind the church and into the small garden, where a few benches were arranged under the trees, he would find his wife. She was back there. He had watched her disappear down the path. If he let himself go to her, he might find her sitting on the one swath of grass that was unspoiled by trash or the scrubby groundcover that squirrels and rats scratched in, making the leaves above them shake as they moved. He knew the place; they had sat together with the newspaper and sandwiches there, before. She might be sitting on the grass, or lying down on it, her dress drawn up to the tops of her thighs. The backs of her legs would be crosshatched in red when she stood, and she would shake out her dress and put her hands at the center of her back, look around. He could picture this easily, the bits of grass that would go flying when she shook out her dress, the way the cotton of it would have gone thinner in the heat, would cling to her differently. He stood where he was. He walked through the gate.
Bruce saw Charlotte before she saw him. She was standing near the door to the rectory, a metal door that opened onto the garden from the back of the church. She was speaking to a woman. The woman held on to the hand of a little girl; the girl dragged against the force of the woman’s grasp, leaning away from her as if she were walking into a windstorm. Her body hung at an angle to the grass. If the woman lets go, that kid will fall, Bruce thought. He moved toward his wife. It crossed his mind that if the girl slipped from her mother’s hand, he could reach her in time to catch her body and prevent her from possible injury, and that Charlotte would see.
“Sure,” he heard Charlotte say, laughing. “Go ahead.”
The girl straightened suddenly, and reached toward Charlotte’s belly. She touched it with her hand slightly cupped, like she was trying to deliver an extra puff of air to Charlotte’s skin, or measure all that was contained under the slope of her dress. Bruce felt a rush of pride that made him almost hostile toward the girl, toward the tentative awe in her touch. That’s right, he thought. You wish you could have her, but you can’t. Sorry.
Charlotte looked up at him. He had almost reached her, was stepping over the edge of the lawn now. Bruce saw that the smile on Charlotte’s face didn’t die, but remained where it was.
“Oh,” she said.
The woman looked up at him, too. “Bruce,” she called to him.
He froze. He looked more closely at the woman. Was he supposed to know who she was? He waited for her to become familiar, ticking off the seconds as he searched her face.