It was the booze, he told himself, but still he was excited.
“I have another surprise for you.”
“What’s that?” he said, running his hands up and down her arms, his fingers encircling her tiny wrists. She pushed her hands into his pockets and his breathing changed, but she only took out his car keys and held them in front of his nose.
“Ta da,” she said, and he could tell now that the beer had really affected her. The last time he remembered hearing her say “ta da” was when she came out of the bathroom the first night of their honeymoon in her negligee. He wondered for a moment how she was keeping the beer down in her condition.
Connie walked out the front door, the keys still held in front of her like a carrot on a stick, and he followed. She opened the passenger door of the station wagon and said, “Get in.” Then she slid in on the other side and turned the key in the ignition.
“Where’s the thing that makes the seat go closer?” she said impatiently, slurring her words a little.
“Are you nuts?” Tommy said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The seat slid forward with a jerk, and Tommy’s knees were pinned against the glove compartment. When the lights came on, he saw the grass edging the driveway all sharp-edged and clean, like one of those arty nature photographs. Connie put the car into reverse and backed down the driveway. The bumper hit the street solidly.
“Why does it do that?” she asked, jamming on the brake and adjusting the rear-view mirror.
“This is not funny,” Tommy said. “You’re going to kill us both. It’s bad enough that you don’t know how to drive, but you’re drunk to top it all off. Just stop.”
Connie dug in the pocket of her shorts and handed him a square of cardboard. It was a temporary license from the Motor Vehicle Bureau. It said that Concetta M. Scanlan had brown hair and eyes, did not need corrective lenses, was five feet tall and weighed 103 pounds. Tommy thought she was probably a little heavier than that by now.
Connie was cruising silently down Park Street, holding a little too far to the right, staring a little too intently out the windshield, the way Tommy remembered doing when he had first learned how to drive. At the corner she turned left and went around the block. She went around the block again, and then a third time, before pulling back into the driveway. Part of Tommy noticed that she cut it a little too wide on the turns, but he thought that would iron itself out in time. The other part was so enraged that he could taste the metallic tang of adrenaline on his tongue.
“Ta da,” she said again, as she turned off the engine. Without a word he walked back into the house and took another beer out of the refrigerator. He sat down in the living room in his chair and switched on the television. She came and stood in front of it, her arms crossed on her chest.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Congratulations would be nice.”
There was a long silence. Finally he said, “Where are the kids?”
“Joseph is upstairs asleep. Damien is at my father’s. Terence is spending the night at O’Brien’s after his game, and I think Maggie is with Debbie.”
“Oh, that’s convenient,” he said sarcastically.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Connie, turning around to switch off the television.
Tommy just looked at her, his eyes cold, his heart pounding. He looked down and imagined he could see it pulsing beneath his damp dress shirt. The beer was making him feel tired.
“Do you have something going with that guinea?” Tommy finally said.
“You sound exactly like your father,” Connie replied.
It was not, he thought, the way he had planned to bring this up. But it was the sight of her behind the wheel that had set him off, so small that it seemed scarcely possible that she could see over the dashboard or reach the brake pedal, like a little girl playing at being grownup. She was exactly the same, and yet she was entirely different. There was no need for her to be able to do this. He could take her anywhere she wanted to go. He went into the kitchen and uncapped another beer, wondering how he could have finished the last one so quickly, but when he came back she was in the