White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,92
said. He tried to wrap her in a blanket, but she shrugged him off, still crying, and sat on the bed against the headboard. He sat back down on the floor. “Look, at least let me tell you. Gwyneth and I haven’t lived together for four years. She’s with another bloke. But she’s been depressed. She needed to talk. Yes, I was trying to cheer her up, and one thing led to another. It was a one-for-old-time’s-sake kind of thing. It just happened.”
She looked at him. “It didn’t just happen. You weren’t exactly a bystander.”
“I know that.”
“And how come you’re not divorced if you haven’t been together in four years?”
“We haven’t gotten around to it.”
“How could you not get around to it?”
“It hasn’t been a priority. The marriage is over. There were no worldly goods to divide, no children. I don’t need a magistrate or a piece of paper to tell me it’s finished.”
“Are you planning to keep on fucking each other?”
Angry now, he said, “I’m fond of her, she’s fond of me. But it was a mistake … Maybe somewhere in me, I knew how serious it was with you. Maybe I was a bit scared.”
“Do you want to be free? Because if you do, you are.”
“Look, I’m sorry, my love. What more can I say?” His tone softened. “I’ve gone raving bonkers over you. If that’s not enough, then I’ll be off.”
She regarded him coolly. “It feels sloppy to still be married. Sloppier still to spend the night with her.”
“I’m sloppy.”
There was an edge in his voice, something she hadn’t heard before. Impatience, a touch of if this isn’t good enough for you, well, then fuck it.
There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. But it also didn’t seem possible to go on. A door slammed inside her head, but it wasn’t she who’d slammed it. Something in him. Some hard indifference: Don’t try to change me, or there’ll be trouble. Registering it, she backed off.
She lay back against the pillow, wrapped in misery. She loved this man, and there he was sitting on the floor. Take him, warts and all, or leave him was what he was saying.
She patted the bed. “Come on up here,” she said. “What are you doing down there?”
They slept late the next day. The rain and wind had stopped by the time he opened his eyes. The sun traced its way from the right side of a red lacquer chest and made its way toward a hideous umbrella stand made from an elephant foot. Ian peered into Alice’s face as she slept. She’d kicked off the covers and wore only a white T-shirt. He loved her small breasts, the androgynous appeal of her body.
He shifted quietly in bed, saw the striations of light coming in the window, and thought of snow, the long shadows of trees out his window when he’d lived in Norway with Gwyneth years ago. He’d wake in the middle of the night and look out a small window by their loft bed. Sometimes the moon would be there, sometimes the wind, sometimes utter silence. He missed the cold, the way it narrowed thought down to the pinch of survival. But he didn’t miss the crowding, the small rooms, the two of them huddled in front of a double bar electric fire.
He regretted the night in Francistown for Alice’s sake, but it had also felt right at the time. He hadn’t tried to explain this to Alice, but he didn’t believe in the sharp edges of endings. That’s really why he hadn’t bothered with the divorce. Gwyneth had needed him that night. They still understood each other, and it had happened. They’d still be together if they hadn’t fought so much. She was a good sort underneath all that mess of depression and self-delusion and self-involvement, but he couldn’t take the fighting and the continual mood shifts.
Alice stirred and opened her eyes. She smiled when she saw him. And then folded her arms over her breasts.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
He watched while she got out of bed, pulled off the T-shirt and pulled on a different shirt and shorts, and splashed water on her face. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Why?”
“You look far away.”
“I’m still half in a dream.”
He searched her face for signs of trouble. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know. Other people’s dreams are boring.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I was standing at the bottom of a ravine looking up at the lights of a vehicle, way