And that woman looked at me, her face was contorted with fury, and she spat—she tried to spit—and she said, “Get out of here!” She raised an arm, a bare arm through the slit of her nightgown, and she said, “Get out of here you—you horrible girl! You piece of trash!”
I understood immediately that I had done the unspeakable, which was to imply to her that she would die. It had never occurred to me （at that time） that she did not know this, even as I （sort of） did not know this, although I knew it at the point I am speaking about. But when she said that to me, I went out to the side of her house where there was a faucet that came up from the basement, and there were pebbles there, and I sank down on them and I cried. God, did I cry. I cried as I think—perhaps—I have not cried before or since. Because I was young, and I had not seen this before although I had been through much, but—
Well, I am just saying I cried.
* * *
—
And I remember William coming home with the girls and he saw me by the side of the house, and he took the girls inside with the housekeeper, and then he came out and in my memory he was kind to me, really very kind without saying much.
When he went back inside the house he went to his mother’s room for a few minutes, and when he came out he said to me, “No more visiting for anyone,” and then I saw him sit down at the desk and start to write. He was writing his mother’s obituary. I always remember that. The woman was not dead yet, but William was writing her obituary, and for some reason—for all these years—I have admired him for that.
It may be the authority thing I was speaking of earlier.
I do not know.
* * *
I knocked on William’s door, and when he answered it I moved past him and I said—we used to say this sometimes because of when Chrissy had said it as a little girl—I said, “Now listen, you’re starting to piss me off.”
But he did not smile. “Yeah?” he said coldly.
“Yeah,” I said. I went and sat on his bed. “What’s your problem?”
William looked at the floor and shook his head slowly. Then he looked up at me and said, “My problem. What is my problem.”
“Yes,” I said. “What is your problem?”
He went and sat down on the other side of the bed, turning to look at me. “Lucy, my problem is this. I told you my work was not going well, I told you that when you came over after Estelle left. I told you that. Then you asked me about it in the car, and I told you again. But you didn’t listen. You completely did not hear me. And then you asked me if I was jealous of Richard Baxter. And—” He raised a hand. “It made me feel like shit. Which, frankly, I have been feeling like a great deal of the time recently.”
We sat silently for many moments. William got off the bed and walked to the window and then back; his arms were folded across his chest. He said, “You know, you worry about Becka’s husband being self-absorbed, only interested in himself, and I have to tell you, Lucy—you can suffer from that yourself.”
I received this with a physical pain, like a tiny nail had been pushed into my chest.
He continued, “Of course I’m jealous of Baxter. I did nothing of significance in the field like he did.” He turned to the window again. “And we come up here, and I’m scared to death about what to do with this Lois Bubar person, and you get hungry—which you always are, Lucy, you are always hungry, because you never eat anything—and so everything becomes about getting Lucy something to eat. And then when you mention my work, you asked me about my work, and then you immediately start talking about the Amish and what a cult they are. Who gives a shit if they’re a cult or not?”
I sat there for a while and then I got up and went back to my room.
* * *
After I left William, and right before he married Joanne, and then after he did marry her, Chrissy became very thin. I mean she got sick. She had gone to college at the same place that William and I had met. And she got sick. She lost weight, and it was William who called me and said, “Chrissy looks skinny.” I had thought that myself for a while, I had even mentioned it to William, but for William to say it made it suddenly real to me. He added, “Joanne thinks so too.”
She was sick.
Our child was sick.
* * *
—
Chrissy was not talking to me much during this time. On Christmas Day they—all three, William and Chrissy and Becka （but not Joanne）—came to my apartment to see me, and Becka said, with tears in her eyes, “I can’t stand you.” She stood there with her arms tight beside her, as though to let me know I should not touch her. And then she said quietly after Chrissy went into the bathroom, “Look at her! You’re killing my sister.” She turned away and then back and said to me, “You are killing your daughter.”