American Appetites by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

gone to bed; beyond them, the house, emptied of its guests, seems deafeningly silent, a mysterious becalmed ship at dock in a nighttime sea. Glynnis stares at Bianca, who will not look at her, wanting to take the girl’s face in her hands, to squeeze, to frame, to define; thinking, And shall we quarrel, or shall we kiss each other good night? Or shall we, accustomed as we are of giving and taking hurt, simply say good night, and turn away, and let things as they are.
    Bianca says, “Well—”
    Glynnis says, “Well.” And then, turning away, softly, “Good night.”
    IAN, ON HIS back, lies with a forearm slung over his eyes, to shield them from the bedside lamp. His breath is audible, rasping; he appears to be asleep, unmoving, his long legs outstretched, perfectly still, like a stone figure atop a sarcophagus.
    Glynnis slips on a nightgown; out of old habit draws her hands up, and over, her breasts, cupping them for an instant, feeling an instant’s perplexity and regret. They say of course that it is the body that betrays; the self, the soul, remains inviolate; thus you are twenty years old so abruptly, so rudely, in a fifty-year-old body. And your journey has only now begun.
    I cannot bear it, Glynnis thinks.
    Something will happen and it will happen soon and it will happen without my volition or responsibility: but what?
    She thinks of Ian, surprised in his study in the dark, having made, or having attempted to make, or having contemplated making, a telephone call. A professional call, and why not believe it, why not? For after all (Glynnis begins to think, heartened) it is not the first time Ian, or one or another of his colleagues, like Vincent, like Denis, above all Amos, has acted similarly. . . . Social life does not mean to men what it means to women, Elizabeth Kuhn once remarked. That is a fact we must always remember.
    But an old memory, an old perplexity, intrudes: in January, Ian went to a professional conference in Boston at which he, or the Journal , received an award; but when Glynnis telephoned, on Saturday afternoon, she was informed that Ian had already checked out of the hotel. The conference was scheduled to disband on Sunday afternoon; Ian had told her he would be home Sunday evening; where was he? She thought, I will resist the impulse to call one of his friends. I will resist the impulse to hunt him down.
    And when, Sunday evening, Ian returned home, tired, irritable, vague, telling Glynnis that the conference had not gone “perfectly”—there was a conservative faction gathering power among his colleagues, a sort of political-sociobiological element he found incipiently racist and in other ways distasteful—Glynnis said only, “What about your award; aren’t you pleased with that?” And Ian said, “Oh, yes, yes, of course,” as if he’d only then remembered it; and to placate her, as a child might placate his mother, he showed her the gilt-stamped document from the National Association of Political Scientists and the check for $1,500. Glynnis had determined she would not ask him about the hotel but heard herself nonetheless ask, casually, “When did you leave Boston?” Ian said, with no apparent hesitation, “Today. This afternoon. The conference lasted until this afternoon.” Still casually, Glynnis said, “But I telephoned you yesterday and they told me you’d checked out, a day ahead of time,” adding, lest it seem she was accusing him—for she was hardly, after all, accusing him—“There must have been a mistake at the desk.” By this time Ian had turned away, was walking away, said only, over his shoulder, “Yes, that’s right—I mean, that is probably right. A mistake at the desk.”
    And Glynnis wanted to scream after him, to rush at him, striking with her fists, hitting, hurting, demanding: Are you lying to me? Are you deceiving me? Don’t you know there