Friend of My Youth

window in his hot room. Murray could feel the heat of the roomand the sweat-slicked hard seat of the chair and the man’s powerful but controlled and concentrated excitement. And looking at Barbara he could feel the glow along the surface of her body, the energy all collected at the skin, as she gave herself up to this assault. She lay not quite still—there was a constant ripple passing over her, with little turns and twitches. Stirrings, shiftings. It was unbearable to watch. In the presence of her child in the middle of the day, in her own back yard, she lay on the grass inviting him. Promising—no, she was already providing—the most exquisite cooperation. It was obscene and enthralling and unbearable.
    Murray could see himself—a man with binoculars watching a man with binoculars watching a woman. A scene from a movie. A comedy.
    He did not know where to go. He could not go out into the yard and put a stop to this. He could not go back to the store and be aware of what was going on over his head. He left the house and got out the car, which he kept in his mother’s garage, and went for a drive. Now he had another set of words to add to
One day I came home unexpectedly: I understood that my life had changed
.
    But he did not understand it. He said, My life has changed, my life has been changed, but he did not understand it at all.
    He drove around the back streets of Walley and over a railway crossing, out into the country. Everything looked as usual and yet like a spiteful imitation of itself. He drove with the windows down, trying to get a breeze, but he was going too slowly. He was driving at the town speed outside the town limits. A truck honked to get by him. This was in front of the brickyard. The noise of the truck’s horn and the sunlight glaring off the bricks hit him all at once, banged him on the head so that he whimpered, as if he had a hangover.
    Daily life continued, ringed by disaster as by a jubilant line of fire. He felt his house transparent, his life transparent—but still standing—himself a stranger, soft-footed and maliciously observant.
    What more would be revealed to him? At supper his daughter said, “Mommy, how come we never go to the beach this summer?” and it was hard to believe she didn’t know everything.
    “You do go,” said Barbara. “You go with Heather’s mother.”
    “But how come you and me and Adam don’t go?”
    “Adam and I like it here.” Very smug and secure Barbara sounds—creamy. “I got tired of talking to the Other Mothers.”
    “Don’t you like Heather’s mother?”
    “Sure.”
    “You don’t.”
    “I do. I’m just lazy, Felicity. I’m unsociable.”
    “You don’t,” said Felicity with satisfaction. She left the table, and Barbara began to describe, as if for Murray’s entertainment, the beach encampment set up by the Other Mothers. Their folding chairs and umbrellas, inflatable toys and mattresses, towels and changes of clothing, lotions, oils, antiseptic, Band-Aids, sun hats, lemonade, Kool-Aid, home-frozen popsicles, and healthful goodies. “Which are supposed to keep the little brutes from whining for French fries,” said Barbara. “They never look at the lake unless one of their kids is in it. They talk about their kids’ asthma or where they get the cheapest T-shirts.”
    Victor still came to visit in the evenings. They still sat in the back yard and drank gin. Now it seemed that in the games and the aimless conversations both Victor and Barbara deferred to Murray, laughed appreciatively, applauded any joke or his sighting of a falling star. He often left them alone together. He went into the kitchen to get more gin or ice; he went to check on the children, pretending that he had heard one of them cry out. He imagined then that Victor’s long bare foot would slide out of its sandal and would graze, then knead, Barbara’s offered calf, her outstretched thigh. Their hands would slide over whatever parts of each other they could reach. For a risky instant they might touch tongues. But when he came clattering out they were always prudently separated, talking some treacherous ordinary talk.
    Victor had to leave earlier than he used to, to get to work at the salt mine. “Off to the salt mine,” he would say—the same thing so many people said around here, the joke that was literally true.
    Murray made love to Barbara then. He had never been so rough with her, or so free. He had a sense of despair and corruption. This is