White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,26

but she was the only one who followed him into the other room.

“What do you want to hear?” he asked, lifting the heavy lid of the grand piano and propping it open.

“A lizard-gobbling tune.”

“That sickened you.”

“Yes.”

“Well I’ll play something to soothe your nerves, shall I?” He sat on the bench and began the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique. The music was deeply reassuring, settled into itself, melancholy tinged with hope. The melody repeated itself an octave higher. Hasse lingered over this note, that one. He played beautifully, but Alice felt something aloof in it, some part kept in reserve, uncommitted. He had dark brown hair, a cleft in his chin, and intelligent-looking, heavily lidded eyes framed by round, rimless glasses. His mouth was the most expressive part of him, both lips full, a little amused—by himself? by the world? by Beethoven? He looked as though he’d play with a woman like that cat with the lizard. He leaned away from the keyboard and closed his eyes, then slowed down before beginning the more agitated middle section. He hesitated, opened his eyes, and stopped playing.

“What’s wrong?”

He looked at her. “Your husband is sleeping with my wife.”

She heard a sound inside her, like something falling.

A mixture of emotion played over his face: sadness, resignation, and a small touch of pity or triumph—was she imagining it?—that he was in control of this information and Alice was not. “You didn’t know?”

“No. I don’t believe you.”

“Observe.”

She thought about it a moment. “How long?”

“It began several months ago.”

“How did you find out?”

“She told me.” He didn’t say Erika. He seemed unable to utter her name.

He started the adagio again, played a few measures, and stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

She shook her head. It could have meant yes or no.

“Why in god’s name did you ask us to dinner?”

“She asked, not me.”

“What for?”

“For appearances. For everything on the surface to look normal.”

Some bitter sound came from her.

“And you?” he said. “What will you do?” He stood up, came to her side, and put a hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes, leaned into him a little. His hand was broad, music lingering in it.

“I don’t know.” The hurt and rage hadn’t come yet, just the burning shame.

“I’ve always liked your eyes,” he said. “Beautiful gray eyes. Would you like to meet sometime?”

She snapped to. “No,” she said.

“Perhaps I could make you happy.”

“I’m not looking for that.” Yes, she said to herself. Play me the way you play Beethoven. “I need to go,” she said.

They returned to the dining room, and a familiar-looking man wearing a moss green safari suit sat with his chair pushed back at an angle. The man had quietly festive eyes. “I’m ready to go,” she said to him. She watched what he did as they said good-bye, where his eyes went. She saw them slide gently under the cerulean blue sleeveless blouse of Erika Lunquist and heard a voice inside her say, This is what grownups do.

10

Marriages survive such things. Hundreds of thousands, millions do, she told herself. Putting his arms around her in bed, Lawrence said that they’d be stronger for this. He seemed more animated, more present than he’d been in months. “Will we?” she asked. Wretchedness—what’s too much to bear? And then the idea of “stronger” caught hold for a moment, the spidery feet of a bird closing around a branch. Yes, perhaps they’d be better off, perhaps this would dislodge some torpor in them, cause something to flare into life. They were still sleeping in the same bed. He said that it was possible to be happily married and continue like this indefinitely. She didn’t ask him not to see Erika. It felt as though it was his business, not hers.

He said gently, “I’m not stopping you, you know.”

“Stopping me from what? Leaving?”

“No. I love you.”

She didn’t believe him. “What? What do you love?”

He looked into her face, his eyes searching the contours. “I love the gap between your teeth,” he said. “I love your hair.” He went to touch it.

Without thinking, she tilted her head away. Those weren’t things to love—hair, teeth. She wasn’t even responsible for them. “Is that it?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.” They fell silent. Once she’d loved his face, the penetrating aqua eyes, shyness in their depths, the scar under the left one that he’d gotten as a boy, running pell-mell into the branch of a tree. She’d loved his mouth. She’d loved his bashful uncommunicativeness,