on the scale to find that she had not gained a pound in spite of her days of lying about. So it all balanced out: she had to give up chocolates, but she had gained a precise and keen beauty of features and body because of it.
She did not mind the rain; she enjoyed it. She liked being cozy and self-sufficient and isolated inside her small house. She made fires; she made tea. She did not look out at the ocean often, because she could not see the ocean, though it was only one hundred yards from where she stood. She could see only gray sheets of rain. It didn’t bother her. She dozed off in the middle of the day, she read in the middle of the night; it was all the same to her. She almost begrudged the interruption of her days by the evening she had planned with her friend Miriam, and Miriam’s husband, Gordon. But she roused herself: the program was a good one, the orchestra would be doing Vivaldi, and Holst, and Brahms. And afterward she was going to a cocktail party with Miriam and Gordon, and there would be lots of people there she hadn’t met. It would be a good evening, and the next day she could sleep late and read again all day in bed.
Margaret put on slim black trousers that felt like silk, and a persimmon-colored blouse, very long and loose and flowing. She put on eye shadow, eye liner, rouge, lipstick, with a steady, subtle hand. Her dark-brown hair, still growing out, was an awkward length now, just below her ears. She swept one side of it back and held it with a black comb: there. She looked really quite good. Elegant, assured. She took up a warm dark-blue shawl for her wrap, and at the last moment grabbed up an umbrella before walking out the door to the car where Miriam and Gordon sat waiting for her with smiles. No one in Liberty, Iowa, would have recognized her, and she was completely, and deliciously, her true self.
—
The seventh day in November in Rocheport was a cool drab day, windy and bleak. Hank picked up Dale after school and drove her to his farm, as he had every night for the past two weeks. Tonight they had a lot to tell each other: the information Dale had received in the mail about the film series, and the trip Hank wanted to chaperone to Boston, and every detail of the day they had spent apart. As they talked, they rapidly chopped vegetables: tomatoes, lettuce, onions. And cheese. They were making tacos. While Dale stirred the meat and sauce, Hank made margaritas, and Dale’s mouth watered to see the drinks, the rims of the glasses cold and thick with salt. They sat across the wooden kitchen table from each other, eating hungrily, scooping up any extra filling off their plates with greedy fingers. Their fingers and mouths became greasy and stained. “God, this is
good
!” they kept saying to each other, and were too gluttonous to say much else.
The first week they had come home and gone to bed immediately, then eaten. This second week they reversed the pattern and ate first. After they finished every scrap and chip of taco, they wiped their hands and mouths briefly, then hurried, laughing, carrying their margaritas with them into the chilly bedroom. They stripped off their clothes and crawled into bed, laughing and gasping in the cold sheets. After they made love they cleaned up the kitchen, and ate red raspberries, and listened to music, and read. Hank eventually drove Dale back to her apartment, for propriety’s sake, and she washed her hair and bathed and fell into bed exhausted, sated, feeling fat and full with food and love.
—
It did not rain in Milwaukee on the seventh day of November, but there was a dramatic change in the weather; a windstorm from the east. Daisy woke to the sound of waves thudding against the breaker rocks below their house. The sky was teal-blue, ominous, strangely darker than the lake, and the lake itself pitched and tossed dramatically. Daisy was distracted; she was fascinated by the windstorm on the lake and longed to stand and watch the whitecaps grow
She did not mind the rain; she enjoyed it. She liked being cozy and self-sufficient and isolated inside her small house. She made fires; she made tea. She did not look out at the ocean often, because she could not see the ocean, though it was only one hundred yards from where she stood. She could see only gray sheets of rain. It didn’t bother her. She dozed off in the middle of the day, she read in the middle of the night; it was all the same to her. She almost begrudged the interruption of her days by the evening she had planned with her friend Miriam, and Miriam’s husband, Gordon. But she roused herself: the program was a good one, the orchestra would be doing Vivaldi, and Holst, and Brahms. And afterward she was going to a cocktail party with Miriam and Gordon, and there would be lots of people there she hadn’t met. It would be a good evening, and the next day she could sleep late and read again all day in bed.
Margaret put on slim black trousers that felt like silk, and a persimmon-colored blouse, very long and loose and flowing. She put on eye shadow, eye liner, rouge, lipstick, with a steady, subtle hand. Her dark-brown hair, still growing out, was an awkward length now, just below her ears. She swept one side of it back and held it with a black comb: there. She looked really quite good. Elegant, assured. She took up a warm dark-blue shawl for her wrap, and at the last moment grabbed up an umbrella before walking out the door to the car where Miriam and Gordon sat waiting for her with smiles. No one in Liberty, Iowa, would have recognized her, and she was completely, and deliciously, her true self.
—
The seventh day in November in Rocheport was a cool drab day, windy and bleak. Hank picked up Dale after school and drove her to his farm, as he had every night for the past two weeks. Tonight they had a lot to tell each other: the information Dale had received in the mail about the film series, and the trip Hank wanted to chaperone to Boston, and every detail of the day they had spent apart. As they talked, they rapidly chopped vegetables: tomatoes, lettuce, onions. And cheese. They were making tacos. While Dale stirred the meat and sauce, Hank made margaritas, and Dale’s mouth watered to see the drinks, the rims of the glasses cold and thick with salt. They sat across the wooden kitchen table from each other, eating hungrily, scooping up any extra filling off their plates with greedy fingers. Their fingers and mouths became greasy and stained. “God, this is
good
!” they kept saying to each other, and were too gluttonous to say much else.
The first week they had come home and gone to bed immediately, then eaten. This second week they reversed the pattern and ate first. After they finished every scrap and chip of taco, they wiped their hands and mouths briefly, then hurried, laughing, carrying their margaritas with them into the chilly bedroom. They stripped off their clothes and crawled into bed, laughing and gasping in the cold sheets. After they made love they cleaned up the kitchen, and ate red raspberries, and listened to music, and read. Hank eventually drove Dale back to her apartment, for propriety’s sake, and she washed her hair and bathed and fell into bed exhausted, sated, feeling fat and full with food and love.
—
It did not rain in Milwaukee on the seventh day of November, but there was a dramatic change in the weather; a windstorm from the east. Daisy woke to the sound of waves thudding against the breaker rocks below their house. The sky was teal-blue, ominous, strangely darker than the lake, and the lake itself pitched and tossed dramatically. Daisy was distracted; she was fascinated by the windstorm on the lake and longed to stand and watch the whitecaps grow
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