The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,121

fool’s paradise. With a floaty clarity (I’d drunk the whiskey on an empty stomach), I considered the possibility that this wasn’t the first time Barbara had been at Danny’s. Hadn’t I wondered what she was up to, leaving the house every afternoon long before she had to be at work? Maybe her secret was that she was seeing Danny on the sly … the way I used to see him when he was her boyfriend, I thought, the guilt from that time flooding me. If Barbara had walked in on us in Chafkin’s storeroom, how would she have felt?

“It’s not the same!” I protested out loud. If God was trying to give me a taste of my own medicine, God had it wrong. Not that my behavior hadn’t been contemptible, but we’d been kids then. Now we were on the brink of our adult lives.

But they couldn’t have been seeing each other behind my back. Even if I believed Barbara was capable of something so lousy, Danny never would have hurt me like that. Would he? In the venomous whisper of doubt I heard the rationalizations he used to give for sneaking around with me, and I wondered if I had utterly misjudged his character, if instead of complicated, forgivable reasons for his behavior, he was simply a manipulator who liked playing one of us against the other. I would come to see Danny as a man who enjoyed subterfuge for its own sake. I don’t think he had become that man yet; it wouldn’t happen until the war. But that afternoon I glimpsed it, and it chilled me—or so I imagined when I looked back and dissected my failed first love. But that cool, rational exercise wouldn’t happen until years later.

That day at Pearl’s, I was like a wounded animal, burrowing into her love seat … and freezing into stillness when I heard someone walking up the porch steps. A voice called through the screen door, “Mrs. Davidoff?”

Danny.

“Mrs. Davidoff?” he called. “I’m looking for Elaine.”

It was dusk, the room in shadow. Hoping he couldn’t see me, I held my breath.

But Pearl came in from the kitchen. “Danny, wait just a minute,” she called.

I jumped up. Whispered, “No.”

Pearl put her hands on my shoulders. “I’ll send him away if you want me to. But you’re not going to have another chance. If you don’t see him and he goes and gets killed in the war, will you be able to forgive yourself?”

“I’d like to kill him myself! Now.”

“I know. And he deserves it.”

But Pearl was right. Everything that Danny had been to me, I couldn’t refuse to see him the night before he left for the war. “Let him in,” I said.

“Light?” She nodded toward the lamp.

“No!”

Pearl told Danny I was here and held open the door for him.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled to Pearl.

Then he was inside. My bashert. He stood tentatively, facing me … in a way that reminded me of the glorious night when he’d stood naked before me. A roaring filled my head, and my legs dissolved. I sat down, willing myself not to faint.

“Danny, you take care of yourself, all right?” Pearl said. Her back was to me, so I couldn’t see the look she gave him, but he seemed to shrink several inches.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Then Pearl left the room. Left me alone with him.

He took a few steps toward me and fell to his knees. “Elaine, I’m sorry. I’m so, so—” He choked on a sob. I had never seen Danny cry, not even as a child. For an instant, my eyes welled up. That made me even more furious at him.

I slapped his face so hard my hand stung. “How could you?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He took the slap, just kneeling there and weeping.

“How could you? With her?” I slapped him again, feeling a savage joy at hurting him.

“Elaine, please!” He grabbed my hands.

“Let go of me!”

“Please, I’m leaving tomorrow. Can’t we talk?”

“Let me go!”

He released me but scrambled to his feet, out of range of my slaps.

“Did you fuck her?” I spat out. I had never spoken that word before. Saying it made me feel grown-up and mean.

He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “No. I didn’t … make love with her. Elaine, I love you.”

“Have you been seeing her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been seeing her in secret?” I studied his face, alert for any subtle shift in expression that would tell me I’d hit a nerve. But he looked stunned, and I