Augusta Played by Kelly Cherry Page B

at noon, horny as a toad, because, he said, he’d been thinking about her all morning when he was supposed to be thinking about the function of the oboe as a displaced phallus in the symphony. Suddenly it would occur to him that his oboe was displaced, and he’d rush home, swept by a large yearning for sexual shelter, to stick it where it belonged, but then he’d rush back to Columbia, and Gus was left in the empty apartment to make up the bed for the second time of the day. She decided she needed a job. He turned as black as his briefcase with anger when she told him.
    â€œWe could use the money,” she said. All they had was his fellowship and some money she had saved from her allowance, which she no longer received.
    â€œWe have plenty of money.” In fact, the fellowship barely covered his tuition and the rent, and now there were her lessons with Julie Baker, and food—although he wondered how food could cost so much, when it seemed to him that he never got any to eat—and bills for this and that, of which there seemed to be double now that he was married. He owed the telephone company three hundred dollars but they would never get him for that since he had installed a phone in Gus’s name. So far as the telephone company was concerned, Norman Gold had vanished. They were getting by; how could Gus call him a failure like this? “You don’t need to work,” he said.
    â€œBut I’m lonely!”
    â€œThat is a hell of a thing to say to me,” he said.
    â€œI don’t see why I can’t say it. I’ll get a job, and that will solve everything. It will kill two birds with one stone.” She looked at Tweetie guiltily.
    â€œI don’t want you to work. You’re supposed to play the flute.”
    â€œAnd why should I play the flute? For whom am I going to play it? Let’s be rational,” she said, “the way you’re always telling me to be. Do I have a concert to give? No. Do I have a record to make? No. Maybe you would like to hire a hall for me so I can make a debut.”
    Norman didn’t answer at first, and Gus told herself that she shouldn’t have said that. She couldn’t ask him to be somebody he wasn’t—he was a theoretician, not a performer. What did he know about things like concert halls?
    â€œOkay,” he said, abruptly. “You get your program in shape. I’ll pay for it.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? We don’t have the money for something like that. I don’t mind, Norman! I really don’t.” She was frightened by the dark color of his face, the tension in his neck, the stoniness of his features. “I knew before we got married that I wasn’t going to get to make a debut.”
    â€œI didn’t marry you so you could give up your career.”
    â€œI don’t want you to ask your father.” She was looking at him closely, trying to determine if that was what he had in mind.
    â€œI won’t ask him,” Norman said, not meeting her eyes.
    â€œAre you thinking of getting a job?” It was the first time it had ever occurred to her that Norman might go to work. It had not yet occurred to him.
    â€œDon’t worry about it,” he said.
    She didn’t. The fight was over, and Gus wasn’t one for rehashing arguments. If Norman said she could give a debut recital, that was good enough for her. It was so simple! Why hadn’t she ever asked him before? She would tell her mother—all she had ever had to do was ask . Norman wouldn’t let her down!
    Being married was not, after all, so very different from being engaged: Gus thought this with a buoyant sensation of relief, with a feeling of jettisoning darker, heavier freight. At night, in bed, she kissed Norman’s reluctant mouth in the blue and white light from the stars and street lamps. It was cold in the room, but it was warm under the quilted comforter.
    Norman capitulated, but