Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell

watching?”
    He still had his coat on; as the flaps splayed open, I glimpsed dry bits of whatever casserole they’d served for lunch on campus; some dotted his beard as well. The room was cold; he’d left the front door open in his hurry. I tried to remember when I’d last heard typing, that soothing rhythm that lulled me through the days.
    â€œShe’s gone?” I said stupidly.
    He ran up the stairs without answering; I heard his footsteps in the wide hallway, the sound of their door opening, the squeak and thud of a cat unceremoniously rejected. And then the bedsprings as he sat heavily on their bed. I could picture the way his hands cradled his drooped head, the slump of his belly and the gapping of his shabby, speckled shirtfront. I’d been so deeply asleep that my arms and legs were numb and heavy. Only the baby’s undulations hadthe forthright confidence of waking. My eyes were open, but I could barely shift my gaze. Perhaps that’s why I heard her footsteps crunching ice on the pavement, heard her turn through the trees into the yard and up the porch.
    We had barely a moment before Stanley heard her, just enough for me to see the splash of a handprint along her cheek, the mud on her leg and on the mended pocket of the buffalo plaid jacket some unknown guest had abandoned at the house long before my time, the one we each grabbed when in a hurry. “Where have you been? What happened?”
    â€œI fell.” Her voice was matter-of-fact as she brushed at a still-damp splodge on her calf. Stanley thudded down the stairs.
    â€œYou left!” He steered her into the kitchen.
    â€œI slipped,” she said, the words trailing down the hall as if she wanted me to hear. It did not take a genius to know that she was lying. “I went for a walk and I slipped.” Such satisfaction in her tone; she was delighted to have worried him.
    I sat up, held my breath so I could hear better. He said, “I told you I talked to her, I told you. I don’t lie to you, I never have.”
    Her voice was too quiet for me to catch her response.
    â€œYou didn’t have to,” he began loudly, and then he, too, began to whisper furiously. One of the gray cats leapt onto my legs and turned, winding down into sleep with an insistent purr. I let her stay, ran my fingers through the soft of her fur. I even admired their battles. Nothing thrown, no neighbors gathering to gape and gossip. Whatever else they were—and I had not forgotten my walk with Shirley in the dark, or any of Mrs. Morse’s aspersions—they were so very good at being married. I listened to their voices edgeand parry; soon enough I heard her laugh and his accompanying chuckle. They’d settled it, whatever it was. Then the clatter of the plates being drawn from the shelves and the clink of silver.
    She was cheerful and he sober as we laid the table, folded the well-laundered napkins. It did not appear to be an effort; rather, they seemed mutually satisfied with whatever they’d agreed to. Later, at dinner, Stanley brought up Spinoza and proceeded to explain why the mind and body are of the same essence, for the benefit of Barry and poor Mealtime, who seemed to be paying an extraordinary price for pot roast, delicious as it was.
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    T HE FOLLOWING WEEK , it was a Tuesday, Mrs. Morse at the library jumped up as I entered. “Did you hear?” she asked. The downy hair on her lined cheeks caught the light from the hanging brass fixtures over the reading table. To be that old was unimaginable to me.
    â€œHear what?” I asked, looking forward to the gossip.
    â€œWhat she did? The lady of the house?” Mrs. Morse placed both hands on the oak reading table and took a gaspy breath, as if her heart were racing.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œYour Mrs. Hyman!”
    â€œWhat did she do?”
    â€œOh my, oh my word, she went to visit the professor’s lady