Straight Man by Richard Russo Read Free Book Online

summer, when everything is green, no house on our hill is visible from the others, which creates the impression of solitude, dispelled only by the occasional glint of painted metal as our cars glide among the trees, the yellow window at night winking through the stirring foliage, the distant argument conducted at an open kitchen window and borne along on the breeze. Starting in lateautumn, though, and continuing through the long Pennsylvania winter, we are more aware of our neighbors’ existence, as we become partially visible to each other among the naked trees. And so during half the year, at least, we wave to one another apologetically, getting into and out of our cars, taking the trash out to the road, shoveling snow off our decks. Now, in April, we are anxiously awaiting our solitude—the reason we all moved to Allegheny Wells to begin with.
    Lily and I purchased the first lot in the development nearly twenty years ago, using the advance on my novel to make the necessary down payment to buy the land and begin construction. Unlike those who followed, we cut down the majority of trees on the lot and put in grass. Lily, who grew up in a grim, dark neighborhood in Philly, wanted light and plenty of it, and long, sloping lawns for me to mow. She also wanted decks, front and back, and lots of patio furniture, as if the presence of summery chaise longues possessed the power to ward off Pennsylvania winters. Needless to say, we store the patio furniture in the garage below the front deck seven full months of the year. But our deck is the best one around for sitting. Cutting down so many trees seems to have reduced the insect population, and we are seldom bothered by bugs. Our neighbors farther down the hill and across the road complain that they are driven indoors as soon as the sun gets below the trees. From our deck we listen to the syncopation of their bug zappers.
    Summer deck sitting is one of the ways Lily and I are compatible. Once we’re done with classes in a few short weeks, the summer evenings will stretch before us, long and languid. We’ll bring bottles of chilled white wine out with us and either read or talk until the quiet and the dark and the wine make us sleepy. Years ago, when the house was new, we occasionally made love outdoors on the deck, but it’s been a long time since we’ve done that. There’s something to be said for outdoor sex, with its vague danger and attending excitement, but sensible middle-aged people are apt to feel foolish screwing on plastic outdoor furniture. Your skin sticks to it, and the sound it makes when you peel yourself free is the sound of folly. And soon the special excitement associated with the possibility that you will be discovered in the act of passion begins to fade because, of course, you are not discovered. On dark, quiet summer nights in the country you can hear a visitor’s car approaching on the county road below from half a mile off, and youknow when it turns off onto your access road, and you can track its progress as it labors up the hill toward the house. By the time whoever it is parks and climbs the creaky deck stairs, you could be showered and freshly dressed, a pot of coffee brewing, cookies arranged on a dish. Surprise, at our age?
    And is it the secret desire for surprise, I wonder as I do my obligatory deep knee bends on the deck, that has caused me to imagine my wife and friend as lovers tonight? It’s not the first such vision I’ve been visited by lately. Once, several months ago, perhaps because I’d heard he was going through a divorce, it occurred to me that Lily might be involved with a man she worked with at the high school, a man named Vince with whom we’d both been casually friendly for years. Sad, serious, decent, socially awkward, he’d always seemed the sort of man Lily would be attracted to if a frivolous, wisecracking, smooth, long-legged fellow like me weren’t in the picture, and for some reason it felt oddly thrilling to