Burning House by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online

he’s coming down with a cold,” Milo says. “The dinner is still on, Louise. We’ll do the dinner. We have to stop at Gristede’s when we get back to town, unless your mother happens to have a tin of anchovies and two sticks of unsalted butter.”
    “Let’s go to Gristede’s,” Louise says. “I like to go there.”
    “Let me look in the kitchen,” I say. The butter is salted, but Milo says that will do, and he takes three sticks instead of two. I have a brainstorm and cut the cellophane on a leftover Christmas present from my aunt—a wicker plate that holds nuts and foil-wrapped triangles of cheese—and, sure enough: one tin of anchovies.
    “We can go to the museum instead,” Milo says to Louise. “Wonderful.”
    But then, going out the door, carrying her bag, he changes his mind. “We can go to America Hurrah, and if we see something beautiful we can buy it,” he says.
    They go off in high spirits. Louise comes up to his waist,almost, and I notice again that they have the same walk. Both of them stride forward with great purpose. Last week, Bradley told me that Milo had bought a weathervane in the shape of a horse, made around 1800, at America Hurrah, and stood it in the bedroom, and then was enraged when Bradley draped his socks over it to dry. Bradley is still learning what a perfectionist Milo is, and how little sense of humor he has. When we were first married, I used one of our pottery casserole dishes to put my jewelry in, and he nagged me until I took it out and put the dish back in the kitchen cabinet. I remember his saying that the dish looked silly on my dresser because it was obvious what it was and people would think we left our dishes lying around. It was one of the things that Milo wouldn’t tolerate, because it was improper.
    When Milo brings Louise back on Saturday night they are not in a good mood. The dinner was all right, Milo says, and Griffin and Amy and Mark were amazed at what a good hostess Louise had been, but Bradley hadn’t been able to eat.
    “Is he still coming down with a cold?” I ask. I was still a little shy about asking questions about Bradley.
    Milo shrugs. “Louise made him take megadoses of vitamin C all weekend.”
    Louise says, “Bradley said that taking too much vitamin C was bad for your kidneys, though.”
    “It’s a rotten climate,” Milo says, sitting on the living-room sofa, scarf and coat still on. “The combination of cold and air pollution …”
    Louise and I look at each other, and then back at Milo. For weeks now, he has been talking about moving to San Francisco, if he can find work there. (Milo is an architect.) This talk bores me, and it makes Louise nervous. I’ve asked him not to talk to her about it unless he’s actually going to move, but he doesn’t seem to be able to stop himself.
    “O.K.,” Milo says, looking at us both. “I’m not going to say anything about San Francisco.”
    “
California
is polluted,” I say. I am unable to stop myself, either.
    Milo heaves himself up from the sofa, ready for the drive back to New York. It is the same way he used to get off the sofa that last year he lived here. He would get up, dress for work, and not even go into the kitchen for breakfast—just sit, sometimes in his coat as he was sitting just now, and at the last minute he would push himself up and go out to the driveway, usually without a goodbye, and get in the car and drive off either very fast or very slowly. I liked it better when he made the tires spin in the gravel when he took off.
    He stops at the doorway now, and turns to face me. “Did I take all your butter?” he says.
    “No,” I say. “There’s another stick.” I point into the kitchen.
    “I could have guessed that’s where it would be,” he says, and smiles at me.
    When Milo comes the next weekend, Bradley is still not with him. The night before, as I was putting Louise to bed, she said that she had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming.
    “I had that feeling a