Desert of the Heart: A Novel by Jane Rule Read Free Book Online

one part of her mind, she had even hoped this change would come over Bill. What surprised her was her own reaction. At first she had felt only a little restless, but gradually her uneasiness grew to a kind of terror, and she longed for the days to pass, for the moment to come when she would be free again. He would let her go. He would have to let her go. She could not live, caught up in his love, tangled in his habits and needs until she could not maintain her own.
    The afternoon she remembered was the last, a dozen Anns and Bills coupling in this nightmare of mirrors, not looking directly at each other, but at the images of each other they found most exciting. One of those faces of Bill had spoken to her out of a mirror, like a god commanding:
    “Marry me.”
    “I couldn’t, Bill. I couldn’t marry anyone.”
    The pool had filled. Ann stepped into the warm water and turned off the fountains. Half floating, her head propped back against the edge of the pool, Ann felt the muscles of her back relax. She reached over for her glass and raised it to salute the single image of herself on the ceiling. “Hello is what a mirror says,” she said softly, and then drank.
    “Well, goldfish,” Silver said, as she came into the room carrying a tray of food, “it’s weeks since I’ve had anything as lovely as you to fish for.”
    “The bait looks good,” Ann said, smiling.
    “I’m going to play you a while before I land you. More Scotch?”
    “Please.”
    Silver set down a plate of eggs, chicken livers, and toast next to Ann’s glass, which she refilled. She put the tray on a low stool and sat down beside it on the rug.
    “Sil, have you ever met anyone who looked like you?”
    “Like me? When God made me, love …”
    “I know … He broke the mold.”
    “I broke it,” Silver corrected. “Ripped my mother from her ass to her navel.” Ann smiled sceptically. “Well, she died of me, poor soul. Somebody along the assembly line must have made a mistake.”
    “Maybe you were her double,” Ann said. “They say, when you meet your own double, you die. ‘The magus Zoroaster, my dead child, met his own image walking in the garden.’”
    “It’s only a trick, love. We do it with mirrors.”
    “I don’t think so. I met a woman today who really does look like me.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “It’s true.”
    “Well, if anyone’s going to die of it, I will. Or she will. But you won’t, love.”
    “You think I’m a bitch, don’t you?” Ann said quietly.
    “No, but Bill’s beginning to think so. What in hell are you doing to him?”
    “Nothing, which is terrible. If only he didn’t want us to get married, Sil, if only we could just go on the way we were before, I could cope.”
    “I thought you were in love with him.”
    “Oh, I am. I am. In a way. Or at least I love him. But I can’t live with him, not all the time.”
    “He says whatever went wrong went wrong when you were staying here.”
    “Does he?” Ann said, turning away from her food, resting her head back against the edge of the pool again. She focused her eyes beyond the mirror, trying to reach that unknown presence, that watchfulness beyond the glass, but all she could do was conjure up faces of doubt out of her own imagination. “I don’t know. I only know it is wrong. Don’t you think that marriage just is wrong for some women?”
    “I used to,” Silver admitted. “For me, for instance. Men were my profession, I always had a woman until Joe.”
    “But you haven’t married Joe.”
    “No, but I’m going to, love.”
    “You are!” Ann sat up. “But why?”
    “Well …” Silver paused, watching Ann. “I suppose underneath I always kind of liked the idea.”
    “One man. One woman. Forsaking all others?”
    “It won’t be quite like that,” Silver said, smiling. “But then, it never is. I should know. And who am I, just a two-bit cheesecake, to think it’s got to be Jesus-perfect for me or not at all? Don’t you think