Read Little Scarlet for Free Online Page A

that some housewives get.
    I didn’t get any complaints at the dinner table. It was nice to have everybody there. Bonnie was gone at least one week out of four on her European and African routes with Air France. Jesus spent all day every day either working at the Captain’s Reef supermarket in Venice or sailing along the coast. Most nights he spent with friends on the shore. To have all four of us there together felt like a blessing, even though I am not a religious man.
    “Dad?” Jesus said.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What is Vietnam?”
    “It’s a country.”
    “But who’s fighting them?”
    “They’re having an internal disagreement,” I said. “People in the north want to have it one way and the people in the south want it another.”
    “Which one is right?”
    When Jesus dropped out of school I made him promise to read every day and then to talk to me about what he’d read. That carried over into us discussing newspaper articles almost every morning. We had skipped that morning because I left for the office early, so he kept his discussion for the dinner table.
    “Johnson says it’s the south that’s right. I really couldn’t say.”
    “Does Juice have to go over there and fight the Veemanams, Daddy?” Feather asked.
    “I hope not, honey. I really do hope not.”
     
8
     
    Jesus and Feather were both in bed by eight. She because it was her bedtime and he because he worked so hard. Bonnie and I stretched out on the couch in front of the TV and got reacquainted.
    “It sounds so terrible,” she was saying. She had her back against the arm of the sofa and her bare feet in my lap.
    “What?”
    “The fighting and the violence,” she said.
    “I guess.”
    “What do you mean, you guess?”
    “It’s hot and people are mad,” I said. “They’ve been mad since they were babies.”
    “But it’s stupid to attack just anybody because of their skin.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “It sure is.”
    “Then why don’t you think it’s terrible? I was so frightened for you and the children when I was away.”
    I began to massage the joint under her big toe. She always relaxed when I did that.
    But Bonnie pulled the foot away.
    “Talk to me, Easy. I want to know what you mean.”
    “I missed you every night,” I said. “I wanted you in the bed with me. I kept thinkin’ that if you were there, then things would be better.”
    “I wanted to be. You know that.”
    “Yeah.”
    Some months earlier Bonnie had met an African prince and spent a holiday with him on the isle of Madagascar. After I found out she told me that they hadn’t made love, but there were questions we both had afterwards — questions we didn’t have before.
    “Pain has a memory of its own,” I said, thinking of Joguye Cham, the African prince, and Nola Payne.
    “What do you mean, honey?” Bonnie asked.
    “If I was to hit you right now,” I said. “Haul off with my fist and crack you upside your head it would be on your mind for the rest of your life.”
    I balled my fist as I spoke. Bonnie leaned down and kissed the big knuckle, then licked it.
    “Every day,” I continued, “you’d wonder why I did it and when I might do it again. You’d wonder if you’d done something wrong. You’d hate me but you’d be angry at yourself too.”
    “Why would I be angry at myself if you attacked me?”
    “If you hit me back, you’d worry that it wasn’t enough or maybe too much. You’d worry that maybe I had a reason to hit you and you just didn’t know what it was. If you didn’t hit me back, you’d feel like a coward or a fool. The pain of that one blow would worm around in your gut and change everything you did from that moment on.”
    Bonnie had had her own share of pain in life, I knew that. I didn’t want to bring it up but I felt compelled to explain myself.
    “But even if something happens to me,” she said, feeling the hurt as she spoke, “does that make anything I do right? Shouldn’t we decide at some time to let it go and