The Corrections

cool and so she might as well be comfortable. Denise allowed her lip to curl.
    Robin was eager to bring her lover back into contact with Sinéad and Erin, but Denise, for reasons that she herself could only halfway fathom, refused to see the girls. She couldn’t imagine looking them in the eye; the very thought of four-girl domesticity sickened her.
    “They adore you,” Robin said.
    “I can’t do it.”
    “Why not? ”
    “Because I don’t feel like it. That’s why.”
    “All right. Whatever.”
    “How long is ‘whatever’ going to be your word? Are you ever going to retire it? Or is it your word for life?”
    “Denise, they adore you,” Robin squeaked. “They miss you. And you used to love to see them.”
    “Well, I’m not in a kid kind of mood. I don’t know if I’ll ever be, frankly. So please stop asking me.”
    By now most people would have got the message; most people would have cleared out and never come back. But Robin, it transpired, had a taste for cruel treatment. Robin said, and Denise believed her, that she would never have left Brian if Brian hadn’t left her. Robin liked to be licked and stroked within a micron of coming and then abandoned and made to beg. And Denise liked to do this to her. Denise liked to get out of bed and get dressed and go downstairs while Robin waited for sexual release, because she wouldn’t cheat and touch herself. Denise sat in the kitchen and read a book and smoked until Robin, humiliated, trembling, camedown and begged. Denise’s contempt then was so pure and so strong, it was almost better than sex.
    And so it went. The more Robin agreed to be abused, the more Denise enjoyed abusing her. She ignored Nick Razza’s phone messages. She stayed in bed until two in the afternoon. Her social cigarette habit bloomed into craving. She indulged fifteen years’ accumulated laziness; she lived on her savings account. Every day, she considered all the work she had to do to prepare the house for her parents’ arrival—putting a handle in the shower, carpeting the staircases, buying furniture for the living room, finding a better kitchen table, moving her bed down from the third floor and setting it up in the guest room—and concluded that she lacked the energy. Her life consisted of waiting for the ax to fall. If her parents were coming for six months, there was no point in starting something else. She had to get all her slacking-off done now.
    What exactly her father thought about Corecktall was difficult to know. The one time she asked him directly, on the phone, he didn’t answer.
    “AL?” Enid prompted. “Denise wants to know HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT CORECKTALL.”
    Alfred’s voice was sour. “You’d think they could have found a better name than that.”
    “It’s a completely different spelling,” Enid said. “Denise wants to know if you’re EXCITED ABOUT THE TREATMENT.”
    Silence.
    “Al, tell her how excited you are.”
    “I find that my affliction gets a little worse every week. I can’t see that another drug is going to make much difference.”
    “Al, it’s not a drug, it’s a radical new therapy that uses your patent!”
    “I’ve learned to put up with a certain amount of optimism. So, we will stick to the plan.”
    “Denise,” Enid said, “I can do lots to help out. I can make all the meals and do all the laundry. I think it will be a great adventure! It’s so wonderful that you’re offering.”
    Denise couldn’t imagine six months with her parents in a house and a city she was done with, six months of invisibility as the accommodating and responsible daughter that she could barely pretend to be. She’d made a promise, however; and so she took her rage out on Robin.
    On the Saturday night before Christmas she sat in her kitchen and blew smoke at Robin while Robin maddened her by trying to cheer her up.
    “You’re giving them a great gift,” Robin said, “by inviting them to stay with you.”
    “It would be a gift if I weren’t a mess,” Denise said. “But you should only offer what you can actually deliver.”
    “You can deliver it,” Robin said. “I’ll help you. I can spend mornings with your dad, and give your mom a break, and you can go off by yourself, and do whatever you want. I’ll come three or four mornings a week.”
    To Denise Robin’s offer only made the prospect of those mornings bleaker and more suffocating.
    “Do you not understand?” she said. “I hate this house. I hate this city. I hate my life