Where I'm Calling From

does, secretly pleased at the doctor’s solicitous attention. She goes away for a while to a place the doctor recommends. Stuart’s mother comes out from Ohio in a hurry to care for the child. But she, Claire, spoils everything and returns home in a few weeks. His mother moves out of the house and takes an apartment across town and perches there, as if waiting. One night in bed when they are both near sleep, Claire tells him that she heard some women patients at the clinic discussing fellatio. She thinks this is something he might like to hear. Stuart is pleased at hearing this. He strokes her arm. Things are going to be okay, he says. From now on everything is going to be different and better for them. He has received a promotion and a substantial raise. They’ve even bought another car, a station wagon, her car.
    They’re going to live in the here and now. He says he feels able to relax for the first time in years. In the dark, he goes on stroking her arm…. He continues to bowl and play cards regularly. He goes fishing with three friends of his.
    That eveninc three things happen: Dean says that the children at school told him’hat his father found a dead body in the river. He wants to know about it.
    Stuart explains quickly, leaving out most of the story, saying only that, yes, he and three other men did find a body while they were fishing.
    “What kind of body?” Dean asks. “Was it a girl?”
    “Yes, it was a girl. A woman. Then we called the sheriff.” Stuart looks at me.
    “What’d he say?” Dean asks.
    “He said he’d take care of it.”
    “What did it look like? Was it scary?”
    “That’s enough talk,” I say. “Rinse your plate, Dean, and then you’re excused.”
    “But what’d it look like?” he persists. “I want to know.”
    “You heard me,” I say. “Did you hear me, Dean? Dean!” I want to shake him. I want to shake him until he cries.
    “Do what your mother says,” Stuart tells him quietly. “It was just a body, and that’s all there is to it.”
    I am clearing the table when Stuart comes up behind and touches my arm. His fingers burn. I start, almost losing a plate.
    “What’s the matter with you?” he says, dropping his hand. “Claire, what is it?”
    “You scared me,” I say.
    “That’s what I mean. I should be able to touch you without you jumping out of your skin.” He stands in front of me with a little grin, trying to catch my eyes, and then he puts his arm around my waist. With his other hand he takes my free hand and puts it on the front of his pants.
    “Please, Stuart.” I pull away and he steps back and snaps his fingers.
    “Hell with it then,” he says. “Be that way if you want. But just remember.”
    “Remember what?” I say quickly. I look at him and hold my breath.
    He shrugs. “Nothing, nothing,” he says.
    The second thing that happens is that while we are watching television that evening, he in his leather recliner chair, I on the sofa with a blanket and magazine, the house quiet except for the television, a voice cuts into the program to say that the murdered girl has been identified. Full details will follow on the eleven o’clock news.
    We look at each other. In a few minutes he gets up and says he is going to fix a nightcap. Do I want one?
    “No,” I say.
    “I don’t mind drinking alone,” he says. “I thought I’d ask.”
    I can see he is obscurely hurt, and I look away, ashamed and yet angry at the same time.
    He stays in the kitchen a long while, but comes back with his drink just when the news begins.
    First the announcer repeats the story of the four local fishermen finding the body. Then the station shows a high school graduation photograph of the girl, a dark-haired girl with a round face and full, smiling lips. There’s a film of the girl’s parents entering the funeral home to make the identification. Bewildered, sad, they shuffle slowly up the sidewalk to the front steps to where a man in a dark suit stands waiting, holding the door. Then, it seems as if only seconds have passed, as if they have merely gone inside the door and turned around and come out again, the same couple is shown leaving the building, the woman in tears, covering her face with a handkerchief, the man stopping long enough to say to a reporter, “It’s her, it’s Susan. I can’t say anything right now. I hope they get the person or persons who did it before it happens again. This violence….” He motions feebly at the television