Away from Home by Rona Jaffe Read Free Book Online Page A

walked into the room he was still fiddling with it, trying to find a station that still played music after midnight. He looked up at her almost guiltily, as if he had been trying to arrange everything nicely before she arrived and she had caught him too soon. His look filled her with compassion and reminded her how deeply and protectively she cared for him, so that the first moment after he stepped toward her and took her in his arms she felt calm. She put her arms around his neck.
    “Your hair smells nice,” Neil murmured.
    Her thought swirled to perfume then. What kind was it? Oh, yes, Fleurs de Rocaille. It was nice perfume, she liked it too, it was nice, it was nice.… She tried to direct her thoughts away from his hand where it was stroking her breast, and she closed her eyes. I love him, she told herself; he’s the only man I ever loved. She felt his fingers inside her brassiere then and she took a deep breath, trying to will the physical reaction of desire, concentrating, praying that she could force herself to rise to his caress, so that he would not know, when what she really wanted was to scream.
    “Why don’t you get undressed?” he whispered.
    Margie removed her clothes slowly, knowing that Neil was watching and hating herself for the numbness that did not permit her to hurry for him. Some compulsion made her hang her dress in the closet instead of dropping it over the back of a chair, and she could not stop herself from hanging up her crinoline too and folding her bra and underpants neatly on the chair even though she would only toss them into the laundry hamper tomorrow. She had never been a compulsively neat person, only tidy, but tonight somehow the folding of her clothes took on a monstrous importance, as if she could never think of another thing if it were not done properly. I should have gone to bed first, she thought desperately, and pretended to be asleep. But I did that three times this week, and he must know …
    She knew he was nervous because his hand on her hip was trembling slightly. Perhaps it was the vibration of his nerves communicating itself to her, or perhaps it was something else, but suddenly Margie felt herself begin to tremble. For an instant her husband mistook her trembling for the beginning of passion and he rose on his elbows and covered her with his body, and only then he realized that it had not been excitement but revulsion. For one moment their eyes met, unguarded, and Margie saw in his face such a look of open misery and bewilderment that it almost made her heart stop. He rolled away from her and lay on his stomach, his face in his arms.
    “This is the last time,” Neil said. “The last time.” His voice was muffled.
    “What? I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you,” Margie said, and as soon as the words were out she cringed from them because they sounded so heartless and stupid. She wondered for a terrified instant if he were crying.
    He shook his head and sat up, looking for a cigarette on the bedside table. He did not look at her until he had found one and lighted it. “Do you want a cigarette?”
    “You must hate me,” she whispered.
    “It’s funny, that’s just what I was thinking about you.”
    “Hate you? Oh, my God! Oh, Neil, I love you! I do. You don’t believe it, I know, but I do, I do! ”
    He smiled at her bitterly for a moment and then his face softened. He reached his hand out to touch her and then suddenly drew it back as if he had remembered how repellent his touch seemed to her. Margie reached for his hand and took it in both her own. “Please,” she said.
    “Do you mind if I ask you not to touch me? I’m human.”
    “Please,” she said, and then her throat closed and she could not speak.
    “It wasn’t like this in the beginning,” Neil said. His voice was preoccupied, while he remembered. “I think for a while you almost liked it. In the beginning I thought you were this way because you were nervous, because you were a virgin. It