Read Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances for Free Online

thinning at the back and it wouldn’t hurt him to lose some weight around the middle. Still, and all things considered, they weren’t such a bad lot.
    The burst of sun that snaked in from the terrace cast a glow on the domestic scene. The classic American portrait, father, mother and offspring, along with a well-filled table. Like a Norman Rockwell. Why then should she feel this malaise, this nagging discontent? There were no monetary worries, far from it. Carl’s earnings as a doctor were gargantuan, neither of the kids was in reform school and it would soon be summer, when the living was easy.
    She poured herself some more Beaujolais, forked up the last of her salad and molded her face into a smile. This was hers, this was what she had, it was all she would ever have and she wouldn’t have it always. She sat there, with that fixed smile, which encompassed them all. Her family, two of whom she had brought forth from her own body.
    And now it was time to get up and clear the table, bring in the dessert, the pot of coffee, fresh napkins. Bruce would help her, though Nancy would remain seated, keeping her father company, the two of them grinning at each other and he asking about her day at school. She would do one of her imitations, having inherited this dubious talent from her mother. Some instructor or other, mimic his speech or his stance or his pedantry. Carl would smile anticipatively. After a while, from the kitchen, she would hear his deep-bodied laugh, while she and Bruce exchanged amused glances. “There they go again,” Bruce would say.
    Immobility claimed Christine this evening, however, and the entr’acte between the meal and the dessert was unduly prolonged. She had eaten very little, after the hearty lunch earlier in the day, so it had been for her mostly the green salad. She was still dwelling on the lunch, and her friends, and thinking that the walk later on with Ruth had been sort of idyllic. Two old friends strolling the well-trodden paths of Central Park. The sky had been so blue, like the portals of heaven. How lovely, how lovely …
    Her eyes were heavy — too many martinis. Three. Surely no more than that? She couldn’t quite remember. But three at the most, she never went past three.
    She heard the sigh escaping. It came from her. “Well,” she said, to no one in particular. “Everyone finished?”
    Everyone was, it seemed. But she didn’t get up, just sat there. There were no remarks, no one made a crack at the unwonted delay, not even Nancy asked were they going to stay there all night or what. They just sat there waiting, sort of arrested in motion, almost unmoving, with the sun hitting Carl full in the face, so that he had his head slightly lowered, as if in prayer, and his eyes half closed. She thought of the ossified bodies in Pompeii, lying in their glass showcases on their backs, just the way they had fallen when the terrible blow struck, their voices stilled forever by the awesome force that ended the course of their lives in the midst of whatever they had been doing at the time. Maybe cooking, maybe tending a child, maybe getting ready for a party, maybe screwing, maybe waiting for their dessert to be served, who would ever know now?
    But it wasn’t that, after all, and it wasn’t a Norman Rockwell drawing, all folksy and heartwarming. It was Duane Hanson, of course, of
course
. They were Duane Hanson figures, cast in plaster and then clad in store-bought clothing, large as life and real as life, artfully posed in the most natural postures imaginable, a striking facsimile of honest to God people. There they were, right in her own dining room, to add to the decor. Pretend companions, that’s what they were. She was playing house and force-feeding them, the way she used to do with her dolls.
Eat that up, you bad girl …
    What did she know about them anyway, these days? Everything and nothing. What did they know about her? She was chief cook and bottle washer, the fixer. It was her