Shallow Graves

knew that straying spouses and bad moviemakers share the same obsessive flaw: excessive explanation.
    “Who is he?”
    “A man here in town.”
    “Doesn’t word get around?”
    “We’ve been excruciatingly careful. See, Keith’s a wonderful person. He’s Joe solid. He loves Sam. He’s never so much as raised his voice to me. He dotes. He provides. But do I feel magic? No. But should you feel magic?”
    “I heard this line once: a relationship’s like a fire. You got a few months of flame, a year of embers, then the rest smoke.”
    “It’s comfortable.”
    “There’s a lot to be said for comfort.”
    “But I want more, Pellam. Or I thought I wanted more. This thing with Sam, the drugs. It scared me bad. It shook me up. I didn’t get an hour’s sleep last night.”
    “He’s okay, isn’t he?”
    “Oh, yeah, he’ll be fine. It just made me feel so vulnerable. Here I was looking for some—” She glanced at him. “—for some flame and it almost seemed that Sam getting sick was revenge for that.”
    “You love him? This other guy?”
    A beat of a pause. “At first. But now I don’t think so.”
    “You love Keith?”
    “I know I love Sam and my house. I think I love Keith. I’m tired of having an affair. I shouldn’t be saying this to you, should I?” Her eyes were wide, and she seemed very young.
    Pellam smiled. “Say whatever you want. I like listening.”
    “Keith’s so smart. He doesn’t . . . It’s not like he makes me feel stupid, not intentionally, I mean. But I feel stupid.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I’m just not, well, intelligent.”
    “What does that mean?” Pellam asked. “That you can’t do calculus in your head? Or recite the periodic table of the elements?”
    “Keith tries to tell me about his business, I don’t follow what he’s saying. I try, but—”
    “Meg, he’s a chemist. Why should you understand chemistry?”
    “Well, politics too. And I don’t read a lot. I try but it’s just beyond me.”
    “You’re talking in generalities. What’s beyond you?”
    There was a pop and a flash of light behind them. Meg jumped, then laughed. A bulb in one of the kitchen’s wall sconces had burned out. Meg pulled the shade off, blew on the bulb to cool it and unscrewed it. “When I was a girl, I was afraid of the light. Isn’t that odd? Most kids are afraid of the dark. But I hated the light. There was no door to my room and the light from the living room, that white-blue light from bare bulbs, would glare and keep me up. Even when I was older, when my mother put a sheet up for a door, that didn’t keep the light out. You know why I hated it? It was that when they fought, my parents’ voices seemed to come from that light. I’d hide under the blankets. Mother thought I was afraid of ghosts or something. I was afraid of the light. That’s what I feel like now. Light is so hard to escape from.” Meg changed the bulb. “I feel you’re some kind of darkness.” She laughed. “I’m sure this is coming out all wrong.”
    For a time, after he started scouting, Pellam had wondered why this always happened. Why people talked to him as much as they did, bared their hidden secrets and passions. Priests didn’t hear the kinds of things Pellam heard. Then he realized it wasn’t so much that he was a good listener; it was that he was safe. They could spill their guts and he’d be gone in a week or two. Their secrets with him.
    “I knew you didn’t have anything to do with Sam,” she said. “I really did.” The words were halting. Women are usually better apologists than men. Meg wasn’t.
    “What’re you going to do?” he asked.
    “I’m going to stop seeing him, my lover.”
    “Is that what you want to do?”
    “It’s what I have to do. . . .” She looked at her watch. “Pellam, can I ask a favor?”
    He didn’t think it was going to involve freckles on her chest or anywhere else. He’d given up on that. He said, “Sure.”
    “Keith’s going to be working all day. Could you stay around here? Did you have any plans?”
    “Nothing to speak of.”
    “Would you? We could all have Sunday dinner. Maybe you could do some shooting with Sam. He’s got a .22 and a little .410 shotgun we gave him last year.”
    Pellam said, “I’d love to.”
    “Really?”
    “Really.”
    Then she was smiling like a sassy schoolgirl. She looked at her watch. “We’ve got an hour before I pick Sam up at Sunday school. There’s something we could do