True Believers(12)

What she did instead was to get her robe and go to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth. She took clean underwear and a clean nightshirt out of the linen cupboard and put them aside to put on after she had had her shower. Then she turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and stepped under it. This bathroom was the only completely apolitical place in the house. The bathroom downstairs had two bumper stickers on magnetic backs tacked to the side of the shower she never used. One said: GOD, PROTECT ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS. The other said: GOD IS JUST PRETEND. Soap got in her eyes, and she brushed it out. It was a terrible thing to say, but sometimes she thought the bumper stickers were the best thing about the freethought movement. At least they had something in the way of public support. Freethought itself seemed to be—invisible.

She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She toweled herself off, although not quite dry. She let her hair hang over her shoulder in wet clumps of permanent wave curls. Then she put on clean underwear and a clean nightgown and her robe and headed down the stairs to the kitchen. She got to the landing before her stomach started to knot up.

“Will?” she called, into the dark of the stairwell.

There was no answer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. She could hear him there, moving around between the sink and the kitchen table. She thought about going back to her bedroom and brushing out her hair, but that was stupid. It was worse than stupid. After twenty-five years of marriage, it was more like crazy. Then she realized she had said it, in her head: her bedroom, not theirs. Will had only been sleeping down the hall for ten days, and already she was taking it as permanent.

She undid the belt of her robe and tied it again. She went very carefully down the last of the stairs, straining to hear whatever could be heard. The percolator was on. She could smell the thick scent of the French vanilla coffee Will liked to have for breakfast. He’d made toast, too. He’d even burned it.

She went across the living room and down the back hall. It took everything she had not to stop on the way to brush her hair. Her big pocketbook was sitting on the coffee table in front of the hearth. She could have gotten the brush out of that and used it. The hall was narrow and claustrophobic. It was always what she had liked least about this house. She couldn’t remember now why they had bought it in the first place. Will had wanted to live out on the Main Line, or in Bucks County, or anywhere it was green. The thought of being stuck out in the suburbs had scared her to death.

She got to the kitchen door and stopped. Will was sitting in his usual place at the table, his legs stretched out awkwardly in an attempt to make himself more comfortable. He was so tall and thin, anybody who looked at him could tell that he’d played basketball in high school—in much the same way, Edith thought, that anybody could tell he had once been an Eagle Scout. She cleared her throat. He looked up, impassive, and then looked down again. He was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer. His face was open and smooth, as if he had nothing on his mind this morning but the sports scores and that odd knocking noise the car had started to make on the way home from work yesterday. He had the face of someone who had never had anything but a clean conscience at every split second of his life.

Edith came around to the other side of the table and got a coffee cup and saucer out of the cabinet. She put them down on the counter and reached for the coffeepot. The coffeepot was full, which made her feel suddenly and light-headedly relieved. At least he wasn’t trying to starve her. At least he wasn’t acting as if she didn’t exist.

She put the coffee cup down in front of her usual place at the table, and then she saw it: the latest copy of Vanity Fair, open to that incredible two-page spread that was the start of the article on Bennis Hannaford. Edith brushed wet hair off her forehead. She had seen the piece before. Will had to know that. She had seen the piece and noted the obvious, which was that Vanity Fair had tried to make Hillary Clinton look glamourous and almost succeeded, but with Bennis Hannaford they hadn’t even had to try.

She flipped the magazine shut and pushed it into the middle of the table. Then she sat down and said, “Well, that was nice of you.”

Will looked up. Edith found herself wishing, uneasily, that he would let more emotion into his face. As it was, it was as if a rock were looking at her.

“I thought you’d be interested,” Will said flatly. “She is a friend of yours. Or was. She was a friend of yours. Isn’t that the way it works with you?”

Edith stirred the coffee in her cup, even though she hadn’t put any sugar or milk in it. “I don’t know what you’re doing this for. I really don’t. None of what happened here has anything to do with Bennis Hannaford.”