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.There was an ache in the hinge of his jaw.Furthermore, he sensed that she was avoiding him, shunning beforehand the unwelcome advances he could not bring himself to make, which caused him to feel like even more of a heel.After their initial conversation in the kitchen, he and Rosa seemed to find it hard to get a second one started.For a while, he was so preoccupied by his clumsy attempts at small talk that he failed to remark her own reticence whenever they were alone.When he finally did notice it, he attributed her silence to animosity.For days, he stood in the cold shower of her imagined anger, which he felt he entirely deserved.Not only for having left her pregnant and in the lurch, so that he might go off in a failed pursuit of an impossible revenge; but for having never returned, never telephoned or dropped a line, never once thought of her—so he imagined that she imagined—in all those years away.The expanding gas of silence between them only excited his shame and lust the more.In the absence of verbal intercourse, he became hyperaware of other signs of her—the jumble of her makeups and creams and lotions in the bathroom, the Spanish moss of her lingerie dangling from the shower-curtain rod, the irritable tinkle of her spoon against her teacup from the garage, messages from the kitchen written in oregano, bacon, onions cooked in fat.At last, when he could stand it no longer, he decided he had to say something, but the only thing he could think of to say was Please forgive me.He would make a formal apology, as long and abject as need be, and throw himself on her mercy.He mulled and planned and rehearsed his words, and when he happened to be passing her in the narrow hallway, Joe just blurted it out."Look," he said, "I'm sorry.""What did you do?""I'm sorry for everything, I mean.""Oh.That," she said."All right.""I know you must be angry."She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, brow wide and smooth, lips compressed into a doubtful pout.He could not read the expression in her eyes—it kept changing.Finally, she looked down at her freckled arms, rosy and flushed."I have no right to be.""I hurt your feelings.I abandoned you.I left Sammy to do my job.""I don't hold that against you," she said."Not at all.And neither does he, I don't think, not really.We both understand why you left.We understood then.""Thank you," Joe said."Maybe you can explain it to me sometimes.""It was when you didn't come home, Joe.It was when you jumped overboard, or whatever it was you did.""I'm sorry for that, too.""That was something that was very hard for me to understand."He reached for her hand, taken aback by his own daring.She let him hold it for nine seconds, then reclaimed it.Her eyes crossed a little with reproach."I didn't know how to come back to you," he said."I was trying for years, believe me."He was surprised suddenly to find her mouth on his.He put his hand on her heavy breast.They fell sideways against the paneled wall, dislodging a photograph of Ethel Klayman from its nail.Joe began to dig around inside the zipper fly of her jeans.The metal teeth bit into his wrist.He was sure that she was going to pull down her jeans and he was going to climb on top of her, right there in the hallway before Tommy came home from school.He had been wrong all along; it was not anger that she had interposed between them but the pane of an inexpressible longing like his own.Then the next thing he knew, they were standing up again in the middle of the hall, and the various sirens and air-raid beacons that had been going wild all around them seemed to have fallen silent abruptly.She replaced the various things he had left in disarray, zipped her trousers, smoothed her hair.The color on her lips had smeared all over her cheeks."Hum," she said.And then, "Maybe not yet.""I understand," he said."Please let me know." He meant it to sound patient and cooperative, but somehow it came out as abject.Rosa started to laugh.She put her arms around him, and he rubbed the smeared lipstick into her cheeks until it was gone."How did you do it, anyway?" she said.The tips of her teeth were stained with tea."Get off the boat in the middle of the ocean, I mean.""I was never on it," Joe said."I went out on a plane the night before.""There were orders.I don't know, medical certificates.Sammy showed me the photostats."He put on a mysterious Cavalieri smile."Always true to the code," she said."It was very cleverly done.""I'm sure it was, dear.You were always a clever boy."He pressed his lips to the parting of her hair.It had an intriguing match-head smell of the Lapsang she preferred."What are we going to do?" he said.She didn't answer at first.She let go and stepped away from him, head tilted to one side, arching a brow; a taunting look that he remembered very well from their previous time together."I have an idea," she said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]