A Stillness in Bethlehem(35)

She knocked snow off her boots and got moving again, through the dark, down the road, toward home. It wasn’t far. The house she shared with Sharon was on the northeast corner lot at the intersection of Carrow and Delaford, if you could call that an intersection. Sharon supposed that it was, but using that term for it bothered her. Intersections had sidewalks and streetlamps and stoplights.

Half a mile past Candy and Reggie’s house, Sharon started to jog, and she jogged the whole last three-quarters of a mile, right down her driveway to her back door. The lights were on all over the house, meaning Susan was home. Sharon hopped up the back porch steps and let herself into the mudroom, humming a little under her breath. The humming was not a good sign. It was “The Wearing of the Green,” and the only times Sharon had ever heard “The Wearing of the Green” was at funerals.

She stuck her head into the kitchen and said, “Susan?”

Susan came into the kitchen from the dining room on the other side. She must have been in the living room and heard Sharon coming up. “Get on in,” she said. “It’s cold out there. How was your class?”

“Class was fine.” Sharon had kicked off her snow boots and left them to lie on the drip-dry grate. Now she shoved her parka onto a hanger and came sock-footed into the kitchen. Susan was putting on a kettle of hot water for tea. There was fresh bread in the middle of the kitchen table, on a board with a knife and a tiny crock of butter at its side. It was this sort of thing that made Sharon’s commitment to Susan so absolute. This sort of thoughtfulness. This sort of care.

“Class was fine,” Sharon said again, sitting down. “It’s coming home I don’t like.”

“I know.”

“It wasn’t half as bad as usual, believe it or not. Or maybe it was worse. She was moaning in there. I kept standing there in the snow, trying to make sure I could hear her breathing. Which I couldn’t do, of course. Just moaning. I suppose that’s good enough.”

“You did what you could, Sharon. If you want, we can call Franklin Morrison again.”

“No, that’s all right. What good would it do?”

“Maybe it would do some good for you.”

Sharon shook her head. “I’ll be fine. What about you? How was New Hampshire?”

“The way New Hampshire always is,” Susan said, light and tight. “I had my problem with my mother long before I had you. Or anybody like you. If you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean.” Sharon sighed. “Do you ever wonder about it? The way people are, I mean. Candy and Reggie. Your mother.”

Susan smiled. “The men I knew in New York before I met you? I don’t wonder how jerks get to be jerks, Sharon. They just are.”

“Do you think Candy is a jerk?”

“I think anybody who can’t take care of herself is a fool. Especially any woman. Come on now. There must be something we can talk about that isn’t depressing. What went on in town today?”

Sharon pulled the bread to her and cut a slice. The kettle began to boil and Susan turned to take it off the stove. Susan had a perfect jawline, tight and well-defined, flawless. Susan was flawless all over, in spite of the fact that she was getting on to forty. Sharon ate bread and butter and watched Susan pour them both some tea.

“Well,” she said, “Jan-Mark Verek is apparently finished grieving, or he likes to work when he grieves. You remember how he was painting a portrait of Dinah Ketchum?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, now he’s painting one of Cara Hutchinson. At least, according to Cara Hutchinson he is. She was all over town with it this morning. She’s supposed to go up there tomorrow for a sitting, and she can hardly contain herself.”

Susan looked amused. “He’ll make her look like a lot of puke-green blobs on a piece of recycled paper. Do you think she’ll mind?”

“I don’t even think she’ll notice. She’s already gotten him to give her the grand tour. She was all over town about that, too. How wonderful the house was. How he keeps Tisha’s office practically as a shrine.”

“Horse manure,” Susan said.

“I’m with you.” Sharon put too much sugar in her tea, because she always put too much sugar in her tea. “Still, it had me worried, for a bit. About what Tisha might have left lying around her office that Jan-Mark hasn’t bothered to clean up yet.”

“I don’t think Tisha left things just lying around her office. She was much more organized than that.”

“I know,” Sharon said. “Maybe there isn’t anything we can talk about without getting depressed. Do you want to get thoroughly down?”