Taking Care by Joy Williams Read Free Book Online

immediately as she had_____.”
    Sam looked at her. She smiled. He looked at the child. The child’s eyes were closed and she was moving her thumb around in her mouth as though she were making butter there. Sam paid the bill. The child went to the bathroom. An hour later, just before the Tappan Zee Bridge, Sam said,
“Notable.”
    “What?” Elizabeth said.
    “Notable.
That’s the word that belongs in all three spaces.”
    “You looked,” Elizabeth said.
    “Goddamn it,” Sam yelled. “I did not look!”
    “I knew this would happen,” Elizabeth said. “I knew it was going to be like this.”
    It is a very hot night. Elizabeth has poison ivy on her wrists. Her wrists are covered with calamine lotion. She has put Saran Wrap over the lotion and secured it with a rubber band. Sam is in love. He smells the wonderfully clean, sun-and-linen smell of Elizabeth and her calamine lotion.
    Elizabeth is going to tell a fairy story to the child. Sam tries to convince her that fables are sanctimonious and dully realistic.
    “Tell her any one except the ‘Frog King,’” Sam whispers.
    “Why can’t I tell her that one,” Elizabeth says. She is worried.
    “The toad stands for male sexuality,” Sam whispers.
    “Oh Sam,” she says. “That’s so superficial. That’s a very superficial analysis of the animal-bridegroom stories.”
    “I am an animal,” Sam growls, biting her softly on the collarbone.
    “Oh Sam,” she says.
    Sam’s first wife was very pretty. She had the flattest stomach he had ever seen and very black, very straight hair. He adored her. He was faithful to her. He wrote both their names on the flyleaves of all his books. They were married for six years. Theywent to Europe. They went to Mexico. In Mexico they lived in a grand room in a simple hotel opposite a square. The trees in the square were pruned in the shape of perfect boxes. Each night, hundreds of birds would come home to the trees. Beside the hotel was the shop of a man who made coffins. So many of the coffins seemed small, for children. Sam’s wife grew depressed. She lay in bed for most of the day. She pretended she was dying. She wanted Sam to make love to her and pretend that she was dying. She wanted a baby. She was all mixed up.
    Sam suggested that it was the ions in the Mexican air that made her depressed. He kept loving her but it became more and more difficult for them both. She continued to retreat into a landscape of chaos and warring feelings.
    Her depression became general. They had been married for almost six years but they were still only twenty-four years old. Often they would go to amusement parks. They liked the bumper cars best. The last time they had gone to the amusement park, Sam had broken his wife’s hand when he crashed head-on into her bumper car. They could probably have gotten over the incident had they not been so bitterly miserable at the time.
    In the middle of the night, the child rushes down the hall and into Elizabeth and Sam’s bedroom.
    “Sam,” the child cries, “the baseball game! I’m missing the baseball game.”
    “There is no baseball game,” Sam says.
    “What’s the matter? What’s happening!” Elizabeth cries.
    “Yes, yes,” the child wails. “I’m late, I’m missing it.”
    “Oh what is it!” Elizabeth cries.
    “The child is having an anxiety attack,” Sam says.
    The child puts her thumb in her mouth and then takes it out again. “I’m only five years old,” she says.
    “That’s right,” Elizabeth says. “She’s too young for anxiety attacks. It’s only a dream.” She takes the child back to herroom. When she comes back, Sam is sitting up against the pillows, drinking a glass of Scotch.
    “Why do you have your hand over your heart?” Elizabeth asks.
    “I think it’s because it hurts,” Sam says.
    Elizabeth is trying to stuff another fable into the child. She is determined this time. Sam has just returned from setting the mooring for his sailboat. He is sprawled in