Change of Heart by Sally Mandel

stood at the curb watching the taillights recede, his breath forming an icy cloud around his face. Then he started off toward Third Avenue. His pace quickened gradually until soon he was practically running uptown.

Chapter 11
    There was silence inside the cab from the moment the door slammed shut outside Pietro’s. Margaret sat wedged between Sharlie and Walter, Walter’s massive shoulder pressing hard against her. She felt the impulse to leap out of the taxi into the dark street where she could breathe. The remarks about Barbara Kaye, so uncalled for. So humiliating, especially in front of Sharlie’s young man. And why was it that she always made a fool of herself whenever it was most important to make a good impression? When Margaret was a child, her mother had insisted that she take up painting: “All the Mackins are artistic. Of course you can paint, Margaret.” But finally the tutor had gently set aside the little girl’s muddy messes and explained to her disappointed mother that maybe they ought to try again when Margaret seemed a little more coordinated. There had been no more attempts at developing her artistic talents, but often, in Walter’s presence, she remembered the splotchy efforts and wondered if that’s what her brain looked like inside on nights like tonight, her thoughts all smeared and blurry when they came out of her mouth. Which only created more tension and made it all worse. When it didn’t matter, when she was talking to the housekeeper or to Sharlie, well, then she had confidence. Then her thoughts and the words she used to express them felt sharp and clean. Sharlie had even told her once that she was witty.
    The cab bounced painfully, and Margaret thought with resentment that Walter always chose the most beat-up-looking taxi with no springs or ball bearings or whatever it was that kept one’s bones from being crunched into dust in the backseat. Oh, but Brian hailed this one, didn’t he? She ran her hand across her forehead, trying to clear her brain of confusion. Then she scrutinized Walter’s features as the lights from Madison Avenue flashed across his grim face. She wondered if she had missed something crucial with all her self-conscious anxiety at the restaurant. It had appeared to her that Walter had found Brian Morgan quite respectable. So why was he sitting next to her now like Mount Rushmore?
    She stole a quick glance at Sharlie, whose expression was as rapturous as Walter’s was dour. Margaret thought of those children’s riddle books with the pages in which something was out of place—a tractor driving across the ocean or a carousel in the middle of a busy intersection. Sharlie gazed happily out the window, Walter glowered, and Margaret, looking at them both, thought uneasily, What’s the matter with this picture?
    Martha, the housekeeper, had already gone to bed, so they hung their own coats away in silence, Walter glaring and Sharlie oblivious. Margaret continued to watch them both with growing panic until finally Walter said tersely to Sharlie, “I want to speak to you.”
    Sharlie blinked her eyes dazedly as if he’d just awakened her from a sound sleep. He nodded his head toward the living room, and they all filed in, Margaret trailing behind, uncertain whether her presence was required and yearning for something soothing to put out the blaze in her solar plexus.
    The living room was so still that their intrusion seemed an affront to its dignified paneled sanctity, the only sounds the shifting of coals in the fireplace as the ashes settled and the tiny clicking of the clock’s gold pendulum. But Walter’s heavy tread scraping against the Oriental rug as he paced back and forth and his careless slam of the door behind them offended Margaret. He had no respect for the ghosts of all those gracious people who’d once lived in this lovely old house.
    Margaret, Walter, and Sharlie, shut up in the living