The Maples stories - By John Updike Page 0,28

the head of the stairs. A dazzling welcome, her shoulders caped in morning sun coming through the window, the very filaments of her flesh on fire.

He went upstairs and checked on each sleeping child in the hope that thus a half-hour of waiting would be consumed. Down in the kitchen again he found that only five minutes had passed and, balked from more bourbon by the certainty that he would become drunk, tried to become angry. He thought of smashing the glass, realized that only he was here to clean it up, and set it down empty on the counter. Anger had never been easy for him; even as a child he had seen there was nobody to be angry at, only tired people anxious to please, good hearts asleep and awake, wrapped in the limits of a universe that itself, from the beauty of its details and its contagious air of freedom, seemed to have been well-intentioned. He tried, instead, to pass the time, to cry – but produced only the ridiculous dry snarling tears of a man alone. He might wake the children. He went outdoors, into the back yard. Through bushes that had shed their leaves he watched headlights hurrying home from meetings, from movies, from trysts. He imagined that tonight he would know the lights of her car even before they turned up the alley and flooded the yard in returning. The yard remained dark. The traffic was diminishing. He went back inside. The kitchen clock said 11:35. He went to the telephone and stared at it, puzzled by the problem it presented, of an invisible lock his fingers could not break. Thus he missed Joan’s headlights turning into the yard. By the time he looked she was walking toward him, beneath the maple tree, from the deadened car. She was wearing a white coat. He opened the kitchen door to greet her, but his impulse of embrace, to socket her into his chest like a heart that had orbited and returned, was abruptly obsolete, rendered showy and false by his wife’s total, disarming familiarity.

He asked, ‘How was it?’

She groaned. ‘They were both having terrible times finishing their sentences. It was agony’

‘Poor souls. Poor Joan.’ He remembered his own agony. ‘You promised to be home by eleven.’

In the kitchen she took off her coat and threw it over a chair. ‘I know, but it would have been too rude to leave, they were both so full of goodness and love. It was terribly frustrating; they wouldn’t let me be angry’ Her face looked flushed, her eyes bright, flying past his toward the counter, where the bourbon waited.

‘You can be angry at me,’ he offered.

‘I’m too tired. I’m too confused. They were so sweet. He’s not angry at you, and she can’t imagine why I should be angry at her. Maybe I’m crazy. Could you make me a drink?’

She sat down on the kitchen chair, on top of her coat. ‘They’re like my parents,’ she said. ‘They believe in the perfectibility of man.’

He gave her the drink, and prompted, ‘She wouldn’t let you be angry.’

Joan sipped and sighed; she was like an actress just off the stage, her gestures still imbued with theatrical exaggeration. ‘I asked her how she’d feel and she said she’d have been pleased if I’d slept with him, that there isn’t any woman she’d rather he slept with, that I would have been a gift she’d have given out of love. She kept calling me her best friend, on and on in that soothing steady voice; I’d never thought of her as that much my best friend. All year I’d felt this constraint between us and of course now I know why. All year she’s been dancing up to me with this little impish arrogance I couldn’t understand.’

‘She likes you very much and we talked a lot about your reaction. She dreaded it.’

‘She kept telling me to be angry with her and of course her telling made it impossible. That soothing steady voice. I don’t think she heard a thing I said. I could see her concentrating, you know, really concentrating, on my lips, but all the time she was framing what she was going to say next. She’s been working on those speeches for a year. I’m looped. Don’t give me any more bourbon.’

‘And he?’

‘Oh, he. He was crazy. He kept talking of it as a revelation. Apparently they’ve been having great sex ever since she told him. He kept using words