Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott Read Free Book Online

and Coppertone, delightfully warm and sun-weary in the shade of the umbrella, in the sweet offshore breeze. And then I heard their mother’s voice calling through the open windows that faced the back of the house. My first impression was that she had dropped something or lost something and was saying, Oh, what happened? or Oh, where is it? Then I wondered for a second—until I remembered who she was—if she might be attempting to sing.
    But the sound never formed itself into speaking or singing, and the tone and timbre, the volume, of her voice was something I had never heard before, certainly something that had never drifted through the rose-covered wall that separated my parents’ bedroom from my own. I tried to look down at the children: Cobweb’s wet thumb had fallen into his lap, but I sensed, although I could not see, that Patricia’s eyes were wide open. Their mother’s voice grew louder. Oh, what happened?
    Oh, where is it? But in a language I didn’t know. I had only heard voices raised to such a pitch in anger—Daisy’s brothers quarreling, or the worst nuns at school demanding our respect-and although I knew this wasn’t anger, I wasn’t surprised either, when she began to swear, or what sounded like swearing, and then, finally, to cry her husband’s name—Phil, Phil, Phil. Somewhere behind all this I thought I heard him saying, Hush, hush, but then even that sound was wiped out by her voice as it veered into a kind of scream. Well before I had admitted to myself that I understood what was going on, I had an impulse to put my hands against the children’s ears. The scream gave way to a recognizable moan, what seemed an endless series of them, and then—I wasn’t following the logic
    here at all—a deep-throated laughter that, even after all the commotion of the last few minutes, seemed inappropriately, falsely, raucous—as if she were making an effort to be heard.
    For me to hear. There was silence, and then I heard him cry, Oh, oh, oh, as if someone were bending back his thumb.
    It was some time before they emerged from the house, both of them showered and dressed now. The children had slept soundly in my lap and were just stirring again, and there were pins and needles in both my legs. She took them from me gently, led them into the house, where the cook had already begun to fix them their dinner, and then she turned back to ask me if I wanted to take one last swim before I went home, her voice its usual slightly flat and nasal drawl. I dove in, mostly to hide my own awkwardness, and when I climbed out only he was on the patio, fiddling with the grill. I pulled my T-shirt over my wet bathing suit, gathered my beach bag and my towel, and slipped into my flip-flops.
    “Good night, Dr. Kaufman,” I said, and he turned to look over his shoulder, not really looking, only putting his face in my direction, not his eyes. He said, “Good night, sugar,” the same endearment he used with the kids.
    They were eating toasted cheese at the table in the breakfast nook, and I kissed them good night and then unwound Cobweb from my waist at the front door with a hundred assurances that I would see him first thing in the morning. I walked home in what was fast becoming twilight, something of the encroaching blue-black sky and the lingering scarlet sunset now embedded like a dark jewel in my own vision of married life-of my own, unformed future.
    Last summer, when my mother guessed that the trip to Europe meant the Kaufmans were divorcing, I thought that afternoon was proof positive she was wrong. I didn’t realize, she argued, how easy a thing divorce had become for non Catholics. She didn’t realize (I failed to argue) what the Kaufmans were capable of doing in the waning hours of a summer afternoon.
    The dog kennel was in the back, behind the pool house.
    The pool without the children’s toys and swim rings seemed desolate, and Red Rover threw himself against the fence when he saw us as if I had