Deadly Beloved(34)

Maybe there wouldn’t, Evelyn had thought at the time—and now, only hours later, she was thinking it again. It was a quarter to eight in the morning and Henry was up and sitting in front of the television set again. He had woken half an hour early and nearly caught Evelyn at her ritual morning window-seat binge. Then he had gotten Evelyn her half grapefruit without sugar and her four-ounce glass of juice from the locked refrigerator, and sat down to watch the news again.

Evelyn was watching him. Feeling huge. Feeling bulky. Feeling fat enough to explode into fragments everywhere in the room, and maybe choke him with them. She wanted his pancakes so badly, she nearly snatched them out from under his nose. On the television screen, a young blond reporter was going over and over what it was the police knew now, which wasn’t much different from what they had known the night before. The television reporter was as thin as a rail and arrogant with it.

“I’ve been thinking about things,” Henry said. “About today, I mean. We may have to change the schedule a bit.”

“We can’t change the schedule,” Evelyn said. “We have to go shopping. We’re nearly out of everything.”

“I know. But I can’t go shopping today. I have some work I have to get done.”

“I have to go shopping.” Evelyn tried to keep the panic out of her voice. “We’re low on everything. We hardly have a thing in the house.”

“This is not a good psychological sign,” Henry said. “It shouldn’t make you crazy just because we have to postpone shopping for a few days. We’re not going to starve. Food shouldn’t be that important to you.”

Evelyn took a deep breath. The window seat was nearly empty. Something about the Patsy and Stephen thing must have gotten to her. She had eaten practically her whole stash of Hostess cupcakes. She hadn’t been able to make herself stop. She had told herself it didn’t matter, because they would go shopping, she would be able to replace them, she would find a way to get away from Henry in the store and eat and eat and eat. Now she rubbed the palms of her hands against her face and tried to breathe normally. She needed something to make the fear go away.

“We’re almost out of everything,” she said, sounding rational even to herself. “It’s not the food I eat that we’re out of. It’s the food you eat that we’re out of.”

“Well, yes. I know that.”

“We can’t just go without food, Henry. And there are things. Dishwashing detergent. Laundry soap. We run out.”

“I know that.” Henry sounded patient, the way he used to when really stupid students wanted his attention, or when girl students who were plain and stocky instead of slim and pretty tried to ask him a question. “I know there are things we legitimately need, Evelyn. That’s not my point.”

“If there are things we legitimately need, we should go and get them.”

Henry cut the last big wedge of pancakes still in front of him into bite-sized pieces. In pieces, the pancakes looked to Evelyn like caramelized corn, waiting to pop up and get her.

“Well,” Henry said. “I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe I could trust you just this once to go to the store by yourself.”

“By myself,” Evelyn repeated.

Henry waved irritably. “I can’t go on policing you forever, Evelyn. Eventually, you’re going to have to take responsibility for all this yourself. I wish you’d join a support group.”

“I don’t want to join a support group.”

“Anyway.” Henry wasn’t really listening. The television news was showing a weather report. He wasn’t really listening to that either. “You have to go out on your own sooner or later. With this work I’m caught up in, it might as well be now.”

“I would need the keys to the car.”

“You can have the keys to the car.”

“I might do anything if I had the keys to the car,” Evelyn said.

Henry turned his face away from the television set.

“For Christ’s sake, Evelyn. Don’t start sounding like The Three Faces of Eve.”

“I might stop at Burger King or Dairy Queen,” Evelyn went on. “I might stop at Taco Bell and buy six ten-packs of hard-shelled tacos and extra sour cream and eat them right there in the parking lot.”

Henry stood up quickly and reached into the pocket of his trousers. He came out with his car keys and tossed them to her. Evelyn almost didn’t catch them. She was that surprised to see them.

“Here,” Henry said. “Take those. Go when you want.”

“I don’t have any money.”