The New Yorker Stories полностью

In the living room, Mr. Camp was asleep in front of the television. Serpico was on. She didn’t remember the movie exactly, but she would be surprised if Al Pacino ever got out of his dilemma. She dropped her handbag in a chair and looked at her husband. It was the first time she had seen him in almost two weeks. Since his brother retired from the government and moved to a house on the Chesapeake, Mr. Camp hardly came home at all. Tonight, many cigarettes had been stubbed out in the ashtray on the table beside his chair. He had on blue Bermuda shorts and a lighter blue knit shirt, white socks, and tennis shoes. His feet were splayed on the footstool. When they were young, he had told her that the world was theirs, and, considering the world her mother envisioned for her—the convent—he’d been right. He had taught her, all in one summer, how to drive, smoke, and have sex. Later, he taught her how to crack crabs and how to dance a rumba.

It was eight o’clock, and outside the light was as blue-gray as fish scales. She went into the kitchen, tiptoeing. She went to the refrigerator and opened the door to the freezer. She knew what she would find, and of course it was there: bluefish, foil-wrapped, neatly stacked to within an inch of the top of the freezer. He had made room for all of them by removing the spaghetti sauce. She closed the door and pulled open the refrigerator door. There were the two containers. The next night, she would make up a big batch of spaghetti. The night after that, they would start eating the fish he’d caught. She opened the freezer door and looked again. The shining rectangles rose up like steep silver steps. The white air blowing off the ice, surrounding them and drifting out, made her squint. It might have been clouds, billowing through heaven. If she could shrink to a fraction of her size, she could walk into the cold, close the door, and start to climb.

She was tired. It was as simple as that. This life she loved so much had been lived, all along, with the greatest effort. She closed the door again. To hold herself still, she held her breath.

Times

It was almost Christmas, and Cammy and Peter were visiting her parents in Cambridge. Late in the afternoon on the second day of their visit, Cammy followed Peter upstairs when he went to take a shower. She wanted a break from trying to make conversation with her mother and father.

“Why is it that I always feel guilty when we’re not at my parents’ house at Christmas?” he said.

“Call them,” she said.

“That makes me feel worse,” he said.

He was looking in the mirror and rubbing his chin, though he had shaved just a few hours ago. Every afternoon, she knew, he felt for a trace of beard but didn’t shave again if he found it. “They probably don’t even notice we’re not there,” he said. “Who’d have time, with my sister and her au pair and her three kids and her cat and her dog and her rabbit.”

“Gerbil,” Cammy said. She sat at the foot of the bed while he undressed. Every year was the same; they offered to visit his parents in Kentucky, and his mother hinted that there was not enough room. The year before, he had said that they’d bring sleeping bags. His mother had said that she thought it was silly to have her family sprawled on the floor, and that they should visit at a more convenient time. Several days ago, before Cammy and Peter left New York for Boston, they had got presents in the mail from his parents. Each of them had been sent a Christmas stocking with a fake-fur top. Cammy’s stocking contained makeup. Peter’s was full of joke presents—a hand buzzer, soap that turned black when you washed your hands, a key chain with a dried yellow fish hanging from it. Peter’s stocking had had a hundred-dollar bill folded in the toe. In the toe of her stocking, Cammy found cuticle scissors.