Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell Page B

something to confide.
    â€œShoving down the stairs and poisoned mushrooms have been my characters’ choices,” she said, tilting her wineglass to catch the light from the brass standing lamp behind her chair. The littleglimmer of the liquid-drenched ice cubes seemed to take all her attention. “And of course a little fire-setting here and there.”
    My own throat felt very dry.
    â€œBut as I’ve gotten older—wiser—I’ve begun to realize how potent a weapon simple fear can be.” She sipped her wine, glanced at me as if we were strangers, and picked up her book again. I admit she frightened me just then, more than a little. But it did not reduce in the slightest or alter by degree my love for her.

Eleven
    M Y PREGNANCY IS WELL ADVANCED . We have begun to joke about names at the dinner table: Dulcinea, Thor, Prufrock. It has snowed so deeply that there are full days when Shirley and I do not go out of the house, trusting to Mr. Powers at the market to get our chickens to us, our flour, our coffee, our cans of peaches in syrup. Her writing project consumes her. She is happy.
    One morning, Stanley asks me what I have read of it. Shirley’s typewriter is already clacking away in the parlor, and Stanley’s eggs are my responsibility by default. I sigh as I stand over the frying pan, one hand on my back, hair curling over my damp forehead. Slattern in training. Fred has already left for the college; he had a student to see.
    â€œRead of Shirley’s novel? Nothing, not really,” I say, although in fact I have glanced at the newest pages by the typewriter on several occasions. I don’t want either of them to know. I love the bits I’ve read. The woman in her book is a middle-aged runaway, a widow who discards her entire life to begin again in some anonymous town, with a new name and no history. She is a psychic, or so she claims. I think she is Shirley, or Shirley is she. But could it be thatShirley always becomes her characters, that when she wrote a schizophrenic, she became one, and that when she wrote an agoraphobic, she became unable to leave the house? In any case, Angela Motorman seems to please her.
    â€œIt’s good, though, she says,” Stanley announces, and the way he studies my face, I see that he is certain I know precisely what the material contains.
    â€œDon’t you read her work?”
    He sips his coffee, flicks through the pile of papers he has brought to breakfast, but does not pick up his red pencil and begin making teacherly comments. “I always read her work in progress,” he says, and then he sips again.
    â€œWell, then.”
    â€œShe doesn’t want me to read this,” he says.
    I flip the eggs over, for just a moment, so that the glossy yolks begin to lose their sheen, then slide them sunny-side up onto his plate. He takes two pieces of toast, rye, with butter. No juice, just the endless cups of coffee. He has not shaved yet this morning, although he is fully dressed. Perhaps he will go off to work this way.
    Even with my slippers on, the chill of the floor creeps into the soles of my feet. As I bring the frying pan to the sink, I shiver involuntarily. When I turn around, having soaked the pan, Stanley has already finished his eggs. A few dark crumbs speckle the front of his sweater, and I think there is a dab of egg at the side of his lip. I don’t tell him. After more than five months sharing his home, a part of me remains wary of Stanley’s potential for anger, for violence, for passion. Fathers, I know, are unpredictable at best.
    He brings his yellow-streaked plate to the sink, layering it into the soapy water I’ve just left in the frying pan. “Do you sew?”
    I nod yes.
    â€œI need a button,” he says, and he thrusts his shirt collar toward me between pinched thumb and forefinger. He smells of cigarette smoke and something I can only call the odor of sleep, and his nose is close to