The Weekend: A Novel by Peter Cameron

pregnant.”
    “I think it takes a while.” Marian sat down on the edge of the dock, her sundress bunched up, her legs in the water.
    “Do you make love differently when you’re trying to get pregnant?” asked Tony.
    “I don’t know,” said Marian. “I forget what it’s like to make love and not try to get pregnant.”
    “You sound so heterosexual,” said Tony. “Maybe you’re trying too hard. Maybe if you forgot about it, it would happen. Like how you remember something only when you’ve stopped trying to remember it.”
    “I don’t have time to forget about it,” said Marian.
    “I feel no desire to procreate,” said Tony. “Would you like to have a child?” he asked Lyle.
    “Yes,” said Lyle. “Theoretically.”
    “You can’t have a theoretical child,” said Marian.
    “I know,” said Lyle. “But I like the idea of having a child. I think I’d like a ward. But wards are rather scarce nowadays, aren’t they?”
    “It’s the century,” said Tony. “In my country there will be plenty of wards.”
    “What country?” asked Marian.
    “I’m going to write a book about a perfect country where it’s always the nineteenth century and where there are plenty of wards,” said Tony. “With maps. And appendices.”
    “It’s hot,” said Marian. “I should have put on my bathing suit.”
    “You don’t need it,” said Tony. “I don’t have mine.”
    “You never have yours.”
    Tony splashed her. “Take off your dress. Come in.”
    “You’ve got it wet now.”
    “Take it off.”
    Marian stood up and pulled her dress off over her head. She was naked beneath it. “How decadent we are,” she said.
    “How American of you to equate nudity with decadence,” said Tony.
    Marian dove into the water. She surfaced and said, “It’s lovely.”
    “Are you supposed to swim so soon after?” asked Lyle.
    “I’ve spent the last twenty minutes with my feet up in the air,” said Marian. “If it hasn’t happened by now, forget it. And let’s stop talking about it. It jinxes it, I’m sure. Do you want to swim up to the rock, Tony?”
    “All right, but slowly. Are you coming, Lyle?”
    “No,” said Lyle. “I’m in no mood to exhaust myself. I’ll stay here and watch you.”
    “Come,” said Tony.
    “No,” said Lyle. “Wave to me when you get there.”

11
    ROBERT FELL ASLEEP ON the lawn, his face pressed against the magazine he had been reading, so that when he awoke, he found the page blurred. Some of the ink had rubbed off—a smudged moist tattoo—onto his cheek. He noticed that Marian had left her paints and pad behind, and he couldn’t resist doing a few sketches: one of an Adirondack chair and its sharp dark shadow on the green lawn, one of the table ensconced beneath the mulberry tree, and one of the pile of croquet balls and mallets. By then the water in the glass had turned a pearly gray, and he poured it onto the lawn.
    He walked down to the edge of the river, squatted, and tested the water with his hands. It was cold. Somewhere beyond the bend of the river he could hear people laughing and splashing,
and a dog barking. Then it was quiet and he could actually hear the flow of the water. He could hear John singing to himself beyond the hedge. And a rustling, high in the trees. After a few minutes he walked up to the house. He selected a peach from the bowl on the kitchen table and ate it. The juice ran down his hands and when he was finished eating the peach he sucked his fingers and then rinsed them beneath the faucet. It was very quiet in the house. He walked through the kitchen into the front hall and then into a cool shuttered room with a low beamed ceiling. A grand piano stood near the window. It was opened and there was some music on the stand. Bookshelves were built along every wall, and a traveling ladder was connected to them via a copper tube. There was a terra-cotta urn of what looked like sea glass in the empty fireplace. A round table stood before the