The Corrections

lonely at eleven on a Monday evening. Brian appeared to be experiencing his first real disappointment in life, and he couldn’t stop talking. “Remember when you said if I weren’t married and you weren’t my employee?”
    “I remember.”
    “Does that still hold?”
    “Let’s go in and have a drink,” Denise said.
    Which was how Brian came to be sleeping in her bed at nine-thirty the next morning when her doorbell rang.
    She was still full of the alcohol that had fueled completion of the picture of weirdness and moral chaos that her life seemed bent on being. Beneath her soddenness, though, anagreeable fizz of celebrity lingered from the night before. It was stronger than anything she felt for Brian.
    The doorbell rang again. She got up and put on a maroon silk robe and looked out the window. Robin Passafaro was standing on the stoop. Brian’s Volvo was parked across the street.
    Denise considered not answering the door, but Robin wouldn’t be looking for her here if she hadn’t already tried the Generator.
    “It’s Robin,” she said. “Stay here and be quiet.”
    Brian in the morning light still wore his pissed-off expression of the night before. “I don’t care if she knows I’m here.”
    “Yeah, but I do.”
    “Well, my car’s right across the street.”
    “I’m aware of that.”
    She, too, felt strangely pissed off with Robin. All summer, betraying Brian, she’d never felt anything like the contempt she felt for his wife as she descended the stairs now. Annoying Robin, stubborn Robin, screeching Robin, hooting Robin, styleless Robin, clueless Robin.
    And yet, the moment she opened the door, her body recognized what it wanted. It wanted Brian on the street and Robin in her bed.
    Robin’s teeth were chattering, though the morning wasn’t cold. “Can I come in?”
    “I’m about to go to work,” Denise said.
    “Five minutes,” Robin said.
    It seemed impossible that she hadn’t seen the pistachio-colored wagon across the street. Denise let her into the front hall and closed the door.
    “My marriage is over,” Robin said. “He didn’t even come home last night.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I’ve been praying for my marriage, but I get distractedby the thought of you. I’m kneeling in church and I start thinking about your body.”
    Dread settled on Denise. She didn’t exactly feel guilty—the egg timer on an ailing marriage had run out; at worst she’d hurried the clock along—but she was sorry that she’d wronged this person, sorry she’d competed. She took Robin’s hands and said, “I want to see you and I want to talk to you. I don’t like what’s happened. But I have to go to work now.”
    The telephone rang in the living room. Robin bit her lip and nodded. “OK.”
    “Can we meet at two?” Denise said.
    “OK.”
    “I’ll call you from work.”
    Robin nodded again. Denise let her out and shut the door and released five breaths’ worth of air.
    “ Denise, it’s Gary, I don’t know where you are, but call me when you get this, there’s been an accident, Dad fell off the cruise ship, he fell about eight stories, I just talked to Mom —”
    She ran to the phone and picked up. “Gary.”
    “I tried you at work.”
    “Is he alive?”
    “Well, he shouldn’t be,” Gary said. “But he is.”
    Gary was at his best in emergencies. The qualities that had infuriated her the day before were a comfort now. She wanted him to know it all. She wanted him to sound pleased with his own calm.
    “They apparently towed him for a mile in forty-five-degree water before the ship could stop,” Gary said. “They’ve got a helicopter coming to take him to New Brunswick. But his back is not broken. His heart is still working. He’s able to speak. He’s a tough old guy. He could be fine.”
    “How’s Mom?”
    “She’s concerned that the cruise is being delayed while the helicopter comes. Other people are being inconvenienced.”
    Denise laughed with relief. “Poor Mom. She wanted this cruise so badly.”
    “Well, I’m afraid her cruising days with Dad are over.”
    The doorbell rang again. Immediately there was a pounding on the door as well, a pounding and a kicking.
    “Gary, hang on one second.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Let me call you right back.”
    The doorbell rang so long and hard it changed its tone, went flat and a little hoarse. She opened the door to a trembling mouth and eyes bright with hatred.
    “Get out of my way,” Robin said, “because I