What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories

up and going back down in the water, it was like so long to good times and hello to bad. Because it was nothing but that all the years after Dummy drowned himself in that dark water.
    Is that what happens when a friend dies? Bad luck for the pals he left behind?
    But as I said, Pearl Harbor and having to move back to his dad's place didn't do my dad one bit of good, either.
    A Serious Talk
    V E R A ' S car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks for that. He pulled into the drive and stopped beside the pie he'd dropped the night before. It was still there, the aluminum pan upside down, a halo of pumpkin filling on the pavement. It was the day after Christmas.
    He'd come on Christmas day to visit his wife and children. Vera had warned him beforehand. She'd told him the score. She'd said he had to be out by six o'clock because her friend and his children were coming for dinner.
    They had sat in the living room and solemnly opened the presents Burt had brought over. They had opened his packages while other packages wrapped in festive paper lay piled under the tree waiting for after six o'clock.
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    He had watched the children open their gifts, waited while Vera undid the ribbon on hers. He saw her slip off the paper, lift the lid, take out the cashmere sweater.
    "It's nice," she said. "Thank you, Burt."
    "Try it on," his daughter said.
    "Put it on," his son said.
    Burt looked at his son, grateful for his backing him up.
    She did try it on. Vera went into the bedroom and came out with it on.
    "It's nice," she said.
    "It's nice on yow," Burt said, and felt a welling in his chest.
    He opened his gifts. From Vera, a gift certificate at Sondheim's men's store. From his daughter, a matching comb and brush. From his son, a ballpoint pen.
    VERA served sodas, and they did a little talking. But mostly they looked at the tree. Then his daughter got up and began setting the dining-room table, and his son went off to his room.
    But Burt liked it where he was. He liked it in front of the fireplace, a glass in his hand, his house, his home.
    Then Vera went into the kitchen.
    From time to time his daughter walked into the dining room with something for the table. Burt watched her. He watched her fold the linen napkins into the wine glasses. He watched her put a slender vase in the middle of the table. He watched her lower a flower into the vase, doing it ever so carefully.
    A small wax and sawdust log burned on the grate. A carton of five more sat ready on the hearth. He got up
    A Serious Talk
    from the sofa and put them all in the fireplace. He watched until they flamed. Then he finished his soda and made for the patio door. On the way, he saw the pies lined up on the sideboard. He stacked them in his arms, all six, one for every ten times she had ever betrayed him.
    In the driveway in the dark, he'd let one fall as he fumbled with the door.
    THE front door was permanently locked since the night his key had broken off inside it. He went around to the back. There was a wreath on the patio door. He rapped on the glass. Vera was in her bathrobe. She looked out at him and frowned. She opened the door a little.
    Burt said, "I want to apologize to you for last night. I want to apologize to the kids, too."
    Vera said, "They're not here."
    She stood in the doorway and he stood on the patio next to the philodendron plant. He pulled at some lint on his sleeve.
    She said, "I can't take any more. You tried to burn the house down."
    "I did not."
    "You did. Everybody here was a witness."
    He said, "Can I come in and talk about it?"
    She drew the robe together at her throat and moved back inside.
    She said, "I have to go somewhere in an hour."
    He looked around. The tree blinked on and off. There was a pile of colored tissue paper and shiny boxes at one end of the sofa. A turkey carcass sat on a platter in the center of the
    What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
    dining-room table, the leathery remains in a bed of parsley as if in a horrible nest. A cone of ash filled the fireplace. There were some empty Shasta cola cans in there too. A trail of smoke stains rose up the bricks to the mantel, where the wood that stopped them was scorched black.
    He turned around and went back to the kitchen.
    He said, "What time did your friend leave last night?"
    She said, "If you're going to start that, you can go right now."
    He pulled a chair out and sat down at the kitchen table in front of the big ashtray. He