Stepping by Nancy Thayer Page B

you, so back off and let me alone.”
    “Zelda,” Anthony said, “I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.”
    “We might lose the farm,” I said, and my voice began to quaver. “We might lose the farm, and I’d have to sell my horse. ‘Thoroughbred horses,’ June wrote Adelaide. Well, yes, they’re Thoroughbreds, and good ones, but one was mine before my marriage and Charlie’s wasn’t expensive. And Mr. Demes farms the bottom pasture and gives us hay from it for the horses in return for the rest of the hay free to himself. Oh, God, I don’t want to lose my horse—”
    I was beginning to cry. The January cold was starting to seep into my bones, and it had suddenly grown quite dark. I turned and ran down the street, away from Anthony. He didn’t come after me. I heard him get into his car and drive down the street, but I didn’t turn my head to see him go. I felt bad—Kansas Methodist guilt again—that I had blithered it all out to Anthony. He wasn’t, after all, responsible for his wife’s actions, and Charlie had probably not wanted to add any tension to his friendship with Anthony by squealing on Anthony’s wife. If Charlie hadn’t told him, I shouldn’t have, either.
    I went home sunk in misery. I made a fire and heated up a stew and put on a lounging robe and waited for Charlie. The television weatherman reported blowing snow on the Kansas turnpike. Hazardous driving conditions. I didn’t worry about Charlie; I knew he was a good driver. But I thought I would go mad as the hours went by and I still didn’t know the outcome of the hearing.
    At ten o’clock Charlie came in the door. His face was so drawn and gray I nearly burst into tears.
    “Charlie—” I went to him and kissed him on the cheek. It wasn’t a moment for sexual love at all.
    “It’s all right,” Charlie said. He managed a smile. “It’s fine. Nothing’s changed. The court ruled against her. They think she’s getting enough. I don’t have to give her anything more. God, I need a drink. It was a long day and the roads were tough. Icy.”
    “Oh, but Charlie,” I cried, clapping my hands, “that’s wonderful . We won’t lose the farm!”
    I hung up his coat; he fixed himself a drink. Then he sat down in his chair in front of the fire and leaned his head in his hands.
    “She looked so awful, Zelda,” he mumbled. “Jesus, she’s like a fury from an old Greek play. She looks hard and bitter and wrinkled and crazy. That pretty young girl I used to love.”
    Every time Charlie talked about Adelaide it was as if he were kicking me over and over again in the stomach. It hurt. It took my breath away. Sometimes I had to sneak to the toilet and vomit. But I never told him that; he never seemed to guess. Now I said nothing.
    “She always had a temper,” Charlie went on, “and it got fiercer and meaner each year, but I never saw her like this. I think she’d kill me if she could. She was so upset when the court ruled against her. She screamed at the judge and at her lawyer and at me. Then she said she wanted my visitation rights taken away, she doesn’t want the girls to see me ever again. She was raving. She had dyed her hair reddish, and she looked awful. I felt I was looking at someone I’d never seen before in my life.”
    Charlie was quiet for a while, and so was I. What could I possibly say?
    “She seems stuck,” Charlie went on finally, “stuck somehow in her life. She can’t move on. She’s nourishing herself on her hate and anger, and it’s a terrible, terrible food. Four years ago, I know exactly when it was, Caroline was overnight at a friend’s and Cathy was asleep in bed. I said, ‘Adelaide, we’ve got to talk. I can’t keep living like this. I don’t love you anymore, and you don’t love me. We’re wasting our lives.’
    “ ‘No, we aren’t,’ she said, ‘we’ve got these two beautiful children to love. That should be enough for anyone.’
    “ ‘It’s not enough for me,’ I told