The Circle by Elaine Feinstein Page B

said. I don’t know. There didn’t seem to be any place in the conversation it fitted. Naturally.
    –I see, he said.
    –Nothing happened, you know.
    –For God’s sake, he said angrily. Stop twittering about.
    –What do you mean?
    –Twittering. He walked up and down the kitchen. All flutter and fuss like a bird. Why can’t you behave directly?
    –There’s nothing, she said, to behave directly about.
    –Oh, I believe that, he laughed shortly. It may surprise you to hear. But it’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about us ,the way we talk to one another.
    They quarrelled then; but later lying in his arms in bed he said, thoughtfully: It wouldn’t make any difference, you know. If it made you happy. I wouldn’t mind.
    –Mind what? she said, and a cold panic clutched at her.
    –I want you to be happy ,he’d said to her. You know what I mean.
    –Well I want to be happy with you, she told him, her heart banging with fear. At the hole she had opened in the ice of their lives, the whole ground swimming with the unfrozen lake of the words they were about to say to one another.
    – I should mind, she said. I should mind very much. It must be that you don’t care    that’s what it is    isn’t it?
    He was silent for a bit. Then he said: You would say that. It’s like you. Just:    be happy.
    –With you with you, she moaned. Ben?
    –Well    go to sleep now.    He said.    Go to sleep.
    *
    And now she and Eli met less frequently. Now she went out more on her own. Very often. To listen or simply to drink. And one night one black rainy night she stood with three men she hardly knew who began to fight, to hurtle against one another, against cars, slithering on the pavement in the rain, their jackets open, their shirts smeared, and their legs twisting. She watched one of them thrown into the road get up staggering, heard glass break as a bottle fell out of his pocket. And stood quite relaxed watching.
    The whole world floated. This was the furthest edge of absurdity to which she had come, the most meaningless and mindless flight from whatever mattered to her. What was she doing there at all? and what serious connection could any of this make to the substance of her life. She had so long and so stubbornly neglected. For what? In pursuit of what dream? Of what freedom ?
    The car was a long walk away. And she wanted only to be home, to be back; homesick and lonely for somewhere: there was anything like tenderness. Her owndrunkenness had not yet really made itself felt; kept off, she supposed, by some unconscious chemical of fear. Now she began to feel the damp air on her face. Realised her cheeks were running with perspiration, had to stop walking, and wipe them with a piece of tissue, began to shake with cold at the same time.
    For a moment she leant against a lamp-post: feeble. She was completely enfeebled. What a ridiculous exercise. The car two hundred paces off. She made her feet take her there. And once inside her whole body ran with the sweat of that effort. She swivelled the car mirror, and looked in the face that met hers: a white shining mask with black fixed holes for eyes.
    She went on staring bewilderedly into those big unmoving holes for a moment, and knew she had to lie down. So she climbed into the back seat, shivering, her head reeling; just to be horizontal was bliss. She did not feel sick. At the same time she was incapable of moving a muscle. Except every so often she looked at her watch and noticed, startled, that another half hour had gone by. At last, at midnight, she made herself sit up. Slowly. At some risk. The blood running dizzily from her white brain. The sweat starting again. –Taxi? She felt in her pockets. Nothing. Where –bag —Did she even?
    The mirror again. White face, black eyes. She straightened it. Looked out through the back window. Rain. The streetlamps were out. The roads silent. Black rain. She put her wet hands on the steering wheel considering. How