Read Away from Home for Free Online Page B

going to be the same. The same? If sameness meant tolerance, indifference, habit, then their marriage would always be the same. But it had not always been this way. A long time ago, just nine years, she and Bert had been loving strangers, excited and wondering with the freshness of their love, reaching out to touch each other a hundred times a day, making mistakes together, alone together, lucky—no, charmed.… And now they were strangers again, alone together again in a new world, and there was loneliness. Perhaps if they had stayed at home among the reassuring, familiar things she never would have noticed the change, accepting it only as a sign of the passage of time, but here, halfway around the world, alone with Bert, she was afraid.
    She could reach out to him now, touch him, make him awaken from sleep, but she would only awaken the stranger. He might murmur, groan with weariness and protest, open his eyes in startled question: Is everything all right? The children? But never with the smile of sleepy love that knows the answer—everything is all right, I just wanted to be sure you were still there, I wanted to tell you I am here. There was no magic kiss to awaken the dreamer to the beautiful image of the past.
    Merry Christmas, Helen said to herself, and felt her own smile like a grimace in the dark. Merry Christmas. But, after all, Christmas morning too was for children, like everything else that was filled with mystery and excitement. The grownups, as Bert would say, had to pay for the presents.

CHAPTER 2
    A half hour after midnight on Christmas Eve, or more accurately, Christmas Day, Margie Davidow followed her husband into their apartment and turned on all the lights in the living room. The martinis she had drunk in the kitchen before dinner and the gin-tonics she had consumed during the party later had worn off, and she felt sober, tired, and slightly apprehensive. She didn’t like this feeling of complete sobriety at night, especially after she had been high, because she was still too close to the feeling of wonderful fuzziness that had vanished.
    “Why are you putting on the lights?” Neil asked, behind her. “I want to go to bed. Aren’t you tired?”
    “I … thought I’d stay up a little while. You go to sleep, darling. You worked today; you must be exhausted.”
    He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll stay up a little with you. Let’s have a drink.”
    She felt the churning begin then, in her stomach, and her heart began to beat so heavily she wondered if some night she would end up having a heart attack. But it was impossible; young women of twenty-five with healthy constitutions never had heart attacks just because of panic. “All right,” she breathed, and the sound came out as if someone were holding her very tightly around the waist.
    “Scotch? No, you’d better stick to gin.”
    She watched Neil measuring out the drinks and saw that he was making hers a good deal stronger than his. The docility of the gesture, the resignation it implied, filled her with guilt, and she wanted to go to him and put her arms around him. She almost did, and then she stopped, knowing he would misunderstand. She shut her eyes and wondered if she were going to cry.
    “It was a good party,” Neil said. “Didn’t you think so?”
    “I had fun.” She took several swallows of her gin-tonic, waiting for it to warm her and knowing in despair it would not. She never could get drunk after she had eaten a large supper; she simply was not made for it. She would be sick first, and that would only make matters worse.
    “If you want to,” Neil said quietly, “we can play chess for half an hour or so.” He was standing by the little marble-topped table that held the chess board, with the chessmen already standing on it ready for the war. He touched the Queen with his long, clean fingers, and the touch seemed almost sensual. Margie shook her head. “You shouldn’t smoke so much,” he said abruptly.
    “I’m