The Progress of Love

and Kevin had discarded the tablecloth. Clayton was making the salad. Clayton was small-boned, like his mother, and fiercely driven. A star runner, a demon examination writer.
    Kevin was prowling around the kitchen, getting in the way, talking to Peg. Kevin was taller already than Clayton or Peg, perhaps taller than Robert. He had large shoulders and skinny legs and black hair that he wore in the nearest thing he dared to a Mohawk cut—Shanna cut it for him. His pale skin often broke out in pimples. Girls didn’t seem to mind.
    “So was there?” Kevin said. “Was there blood and guck all over?”
    “Ghoul,” said Clayton.
    “Those were human beings, Kevin,” Robert said.
    “Were,” said Kevin. “I know they were human beings. I mixed their drinks on Boxing Day. She drank gin and he drank rye. They were human beings then, but all they are now is chemicals. Mom? What did you see first? Shanna said there was blood and guck even out in the hallway.”
    “He’s brutalized from all the TV he watches,” Clayton said. “He thinks it was some video. He can’t tell real blood from video blood.”
    “Mom? Was it splashed?”
    Robert has a rule about letting Peg deal with her sons unless she asks for his help. But this time he said, “Kevin, you know it’s about time you shut up.”“He can’t help it,” Clayton said. “Being ghoulish.”
    “You, too, Clayton. You, too.”
    But after a moment Clayton said, “Mom? Did you scream?”
    “No,” said Peg thoughtfully. “I didn’t. I guess because there wasn’t anybody to hear me. So I didn’t.”
    “I might have heard you,” said Kevin, cautiously trying a comeback.
    “You had the television on.”
    “I didn’t have the sound on. I had my tape on. I might have heard you through the tape if you screamed loud enough.”
    Peg lifted a strand of the spaghetti to try it. Robert was watching her, from time to time. He would have said he was watching to see if she was in any kind of trouble, if she seemed numb, or strange, or showed a quiver, if she dropped things or made the pots clatter. But in fact he was watching her just because there was no sign of such difficulty and because he knew there wouldn’t be. She was preparing an ordinary meal, listening to the boys in her usual mildly censorious but unruffled way. The only thing more apparent than usual to Robert was her gracefulness, lightness, quickness, and ease around the kitchen.
    Her tone to her sons, under its severity, seemed shockingly serene.
    “Kevin, go and get some clothes on, if you want to eat at the table.”
    “I can eat in my pajamas.”
    “No.”
    “I can eat in bed.”
    “Not spaghetti, you can’t.”
    While they were washing up the pots and pans together—Clayton had gone for his run and Kevin was talking to Shanna on the phone—Peg told Robert her part of the story. He didn’t ask her to, in so many words. He started off with “So when you went over, the door wasn’t locked?” and she began to tell him.
    “You don’t mind talking about it?” Robert said.
    “I knew you’d want to know.”
    She told him she knew what was wrong—at least, she knew that something was terribly wrong—before she started up the stairs.
    “Were you frightened?”
    “No. I didn’t think about it like that—being frightened.”
    “There could have been somebody up there with a gun.”
    “No. I knew there wasn’t. I knew there wasn’t anybody but me alive in the house. Then I saw his leg, I saw his leg stretched out into the hall, and I knew then, but I had to go on in and make sure.”
    Robert said, “I understand that.”
    “It wasn’t the foot he had taken the shoe off that was out there. He took the shoe off his other foot, so he could use that foot to pull the trigger when he shot himself. That was how he did it.”
    Robert knew all about that already, from the talk in the diner.
    “So,” said Peg. “That’s really about all.”
    She shook dishwater from her hands, dried them, and, with a critical look, began rubbing in lotion.
    Clayton came in at the side door. He stamped the snow from his shoes and ran up the steps.
    “You should see the cars,” he said. “Stupid cars all crawling along this street. Then they have to turn around at the end and crawl back. I wish they’d get stuck. I stood out there and gave them dirty looks, but I started to freeze so I had to come in.”
    “It’s natural,” Robert said. “It seems stupid but it’s natural. They can’t