Celestial Navigation by Anne Tyler Page B

throw her out of the house, could I?”
    “You could move out yourself,” I said.
    “Well, yes. Yes. In fact I will, but my studio is there. I can’t just up and leave my studio. What I’m counting on is her changing her mind, by and by. I’m certain she’ll leave again.”
    “How can you be sure?” I asked him.
    “She operates on
whims
, Mary. She goes through fads. She’ll get over it. Right now she’s taken with the idea of being a homebody again. Says she wants to settle down, have children, grow vegetables. For Carol that’s ludicrous, I told her straight—”
    “Children?” I said. “You got as far as talking about
children?”
    “Carol
did, I said.”
    “You said she couldn’t have any children.”
    “Oh, well, she’s talking now about going to a doctor for some tests. Wants me to get tested too.”
    “What would they test you for?”
    “To see if it’s me that can’t have them.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It’s hardly ever the man.”
    “Fifty per cent of the time it is.”
    I stared at him.
    “Why, sure,” he said.
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Well, I’m not going, don’t worry,” he told me. He laid his hand over mine. “You’ll see, in a week she’ll move out again.”
    “But—what about now? I mean, how are you arranging it? Where is she sleeping?”
    “Mary. Look. There’s nothing to get upset about. I’m here with you eating lunch, aren’t I? I won’t let you down. Whatever happens, I think of you as my responsibility. Believe me.”
    “Responsibility,” I said.
    “I’ve been through a lot for your sake, Mary. I’m jeopardizing my divorce, I’ve given up motorcycle rallies—”
    “Well! Are you sure I’m worth the sacrifice?”
    “Be reasonable, will you?”
    Reasonableness was why I left with him. He was so reasonable and cool; life with him would be so different. I said, “Tell me something. Why did you ask me to come away with you?”
    “Now, Mary—”
    “No, I mean it. Why didn’t you wait till you were divorced, if you were so reasonable?”
    “Well,
you
know why. I said we might wait and you said no, we’d better do it now or not at all. You didn’t even stop to pack a bag. Once you’d made up your mind you wanted to get going, you said. You weren’t the kind to—”
    “Oh, never mind,” I said. I didn’t want to hear what kind I was. I didn’t want to learn any more, ever, about how I appeared in other people’s eyes.
    We took Darcy back to the boarding house because she was cross and sleepy. After I put her to bed we came out and sat in the parlor—I in an easy chair, John perched on its arm. He kept stroking the inside of my wrist. “Don’t,” I told him.
    “This isn’t like you, Mary,” he said.
    “It isn’t like me to go out with someone whose wife is waiting at home either.”
    “In time,” he said, “this will all be over. It will seem like nothing. You’ll look back on it and laugh.”
    “Well, it may be over someday, and it might seem like nothing,” I told him, “but I will never look back on it and laugh. I don’t feel as if I will ever laugh again.” Then I looked at his face and saw the boredom and irritation drawn across it like a curtain, removed as soon as he found my eyes on him. His mouth was tugged permanently downward by two acid lines at the corners; that much of his expression he could not remove. Think, I told myself, of the clean cut of him, the precision, the logic and decisiveness. Isn’t that why you’re here with him? His forefinger chafed my wrist like sandpaper, as if my skin were peeled back and he were stroking raw nerves. I stood up suddenly, pretending to have heard some sound from Darcy, and I went into the bedroom. Darcy was fast asleep. She lay sprawled across our bed, her mouth slightly open, her hairline damp with sweat. I heard John come up behind me and I felt his hand on my hip. “She’s asleep,” he told me.
    “She’s tired out.”
    “We’re all