That Night by Alice McDermott Read Free Book Online

unwittingly welcomed it. Or if they were simply, merely, hopelessly badgered. Plagued by invisible, arbitrary demons, by chance alone. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time, the place where a thousand others before them had stood unharmed.
    Or is it only that their bad luck seems all of a piece only in the recounting of it?
    Would it have seemed to him, even on that night, that his family’s history of misfortune was, if not fair, at least reasonable—the good with the bad—when held beside, scattered among, all the days when his wife was well and his children untroubled, when his patients waited for him on the porch of the small house, watching the sunset, smelling the grass, speaking softly to one another as neighbors should. Would it have seemed to him, even on that night, more appropriate to ask, as Sheryl’s mother might have asked the morning she fled our street, as lucky as whom? Whose luck is unending? Whose luck has lasted as long as mine has, till now?
    When the phone rang that night, he was watching the way the living room light played prettily over his daughter’s plain features. She was telling him about a customer and laughing. Her toes in their shiny stockings were round and perfectly shaped. The room, which she had polished and vacuumed that morning, had finally given up the day’s heat and grown cool. He was thinking about his wife, who would be home again on Friday, doing better, and how he had loved her when she was his daughter’s age. Loved her the way Rick loved his girl now: crazy cross-eyed with it, a little unreal. He had finally found a good position on the couch and for the past hour or two had felt no pain.
    When Rick called Sheryl’s mother again the next morning, prepared to be relieved, she said her daughter had gone out for the day. He would have recognized the change in her voice from the night before. The night before, she had been hesitant, a little curt, but now she used the sure tone of a person who has long and gleefully rehearsed the way to say, “Gosh, I hate to tell you this ...”
    “She said if you called I should just say she’d gone out for the day. I don’t know where she’s off to, Rick. You know I’ve never made her tell me her every move. You know that.”
    He went to the supermarket, but they told him she hadn’t come in to work. He headed for the mall. Neither of their birthdays was coming up, and their one-year anniversary had already passed. What surprise could she be planning for him; what present was worth all this?
    He was young enough to fear that he had simply become unlovable to her overnight, and he began his search casually, self-consciously, just in case it was true. Just in case somewhere someone was watching him, someone who knew.
    He walked slowly through the mall, his arms loose at his sides, the sun warm on his shoulders and hair. This was in the earlier days of shopping malls, when they still attempted to resemble cluttered Main Streets, not sealed airplane hangars and Disney World bazaars. There were large concrete planters regularly spaced down the center, filled with hedges and begonias and sad-looking trees. Some were surrounded by small groups of teenagers, who held cups of soda or slices of pizza wrapped in greasy wax paper. The girls wore pale, chalky lipstick, their hair was teased, some had pink or turquoise combs slipped into the back pockets of their jeans. He scanned them all quickly—he would know her in a second. He would put his hand to the back of her neck, “Where the hell you been, babe?” If he saw her with someone else, he’d just walk by. Hope his legs would hold him until he got to his car.
    He looked carefully into the shoe store, where the customers, lined up neatly in their seats, were easy to see through the plate-glass windows and doors. He dismissed the paint stores, the men’s shops (unless she was buying him a present?), made one quick pass through Sam Goody’s.
    He began to walk more quickly, sensing