“Anything more?”

  “I’m wide awake.”

  “You’ll go back to sleep.”

  “Anna.”

  “What?”

  “I’m wide awake.”

  She heaved an ostentatious sign and fixed her hands upon her hips. “Well?”

  “Will you read to me?”

  “Read to you! It’s the middle of the night. Anyway, you always say you hate to be read to when I offer.”

  “It’s ten-thirty. Well, twenty to eleven.”

  “Hand me that book!” She reached for his chair.

  “Something of yours.”

  “Something of mine?”

  “I don’t care what.”

  “A sweater pattern?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  She pursed her lips, but she went into her bedroom and found some Dorothy Sayers stories she had been reading the day before.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “Some mystery stories.”

  “I don’t like mystery stories.” He glanced at her. “Usually. Okay.”

  She began. “The gate on whose peeled and faded surface the name Scrawns was just legible in the dim light fell to with a clap that shook the rotten gatepost and scattered a shower of drops on the drenched laurels.” Ike tipped his head back against the wall, then sat noisily upright again and reached for his cup. The girl in the story turned out to be a parlormaid. Ike sniffed, hawked, and swallowed, then reached for his teeth. The habitual clack with which they went into his mouth reverberated above the drone of her own voice. She heard every squeak of his bed as he settled himself again. “. . . giving to that side of the face a look of blind and cunning malignity.”

  “Mother.”

  “‘. . . acutely on Susan’s face.’ What?”

  “Is that door still locked?” He pointed to the door joining their bedrooms.

  “‘I’m Mrs. Jarrock,’ said the woman in her—’ ”

  “Is it?”

  “It never was locked, Ike. It’s tied with a stocking to my bedpost. ‘It was incredible to Susan that any man who was not blind and deaf should have married—’ ”

  “Why?”

  “Because it always has been. I can hear you.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I was in the bathroom with the water running. I can hear you fine in my bedroom.”

  “Then how come you don’t come sometimes?”

  “I always come.”

  “Anna, you know that’s wrong.”

  “‘She said: “How do you do?” and extended a reluctant hand, which Mrs. Jarrock’s vast palm engulfed in a grasp unexpectedly—’ ”

  “Why didn’t he come?”

  “What? Do you want me to read this to you or not?”

  “With Christine. Why didn’t he come?”

  “If you mean Todd, he had to work.”

  “I’d like to see him one more time.”

  “You will.” She lowered the book and glanced sharply at Ike, who was rolling hot chocolate around in his cup. His wrists were as stalklike as his ankles, and the tiny dimple at the tip of his nose had deepened to a crevice. Anna’s hands trembled for a moment. “Lots more times,” but the way she said it sounded as if she were scooting it by him.

  “He’ll be rich.”

  “I suppose.”

  “He’ll be rich!” The anger in his voice was thin but real, and touched off an answering anger in her, as it always did. Once again it seemed possible after all these years to discuss the relative value of wealth, to change Ike’s attitude, rectify his notions. And simultaneously it seemed impossible that she could have lived so long with someone who could insist so triumphantly and resentfully that a relative of his was going to be rich, just a relative, not himself. “So what,” she snapped. “You won’t be here to enjoy it.” Her sight dimmed and brightened. What was she saying? “And neither will I.” But her fingers crept over the upholstery of her chair and touched the wood. She said in a more solicitous voice, “Do you want me to go on reading this story?”

  “Nah.”

  “Can I get you anything? More hot chocolate?”

  “Nah.”

  “What?”

  He waited expectantly. Anna tossed her head in the direction of the bathroom and lifted her eyebrows. He nodded.

  When he shouted that he was finished and she opened the bathroom door to retrieve him, he said, “Are you sorry I was never a success?”

  “What’s a success?”

  “Don’t foist me off with that damned nonsense!”

  “None of your children died before you did. You lived to be an old man. You kept your job during the Depression. You think Christine’s father was more of a success? Or Alfred? You think a man who takes his first drink before breakfast is a success just because he has lots of money and charm? You think Helen thought being left a widow a second time in ten years was a sign of success?” She should have stayed away from Alfred. How to regard him was an ancient bone of contention between them.

  He clenched his teeth. She could see them working inside his thin cheeks. She knew he’d always seen this attitude of hers as intentional perversity, taken to be ornery, and from time to time he had argued bitterly that she ought to blame him for their modest life, their small yard, their single car. She could not. She could, and often did, blame him for many things, but never for these broad movements of fate. He paused to speak, and she half dragged him through the door of his bedroom. He was panting.

  “Ike, you’ve been a good provider,” said Anna, conciliatory.

  “Seth got to be a rich man. Ben, too. Of the five of us boys, I did the least.”

  “Ike, times were different when Seth and Ben were starting out, and Seth’s money went in the Crash just like everybody else’s even though he wasn’t here to see it.”

  “Mama thought I would do the most.”

  “I know, Ike.” Her mother-in-law’s preference for Isaac, the youngest of eight, had been a well-known joke in the Robison family. Abel was his brother too, although Anna didn’t dare mention it. The rumor was that Abel spent some time as a hobo on the railroads during the Depression. Anna sighed and lowered the youngest Robison, who was seven years older than she, down on his old man’s rumpled bed.

  “You should have had a big place, Mother, with some women to help you with the work, and a big terraced garden, and some real good things for the house. Crystal and china. What’s that stuff Helen has? That stuff in the shape of flowers sort of?”

  “The Belleek?”

  Ike nodded. “And Persian rugs. All that stuff.”

  It was almost funny. Not only did she recoil from the very idea of bouncing from wall to wall in a big house, trying to think of something to say to the servants, not only did she shudder at the thought of garish Waterford and gold-bedizened Wedgwood, she also recognized that this pet fantasy of Ike’s, that he had not given her what she wanted and deserved, was a sentimental and determined rearrangement of what he knew to be her character. While she enjoyed as much as anything the knitting of sweaters and the slipcovering of chairs, the redesigning of old clothes and the stashing away of tomatoes, potatoes, and squash from the garden, Ike hated it. To him handmade was always homemade, while to her homemade was something you knew everything about, a contribution you made to your own history. But it was not funny, either. She said, not in a sharp voice, because this was something she really meant, “Ike, I wish Seth and Ben had never made a cent. I really do. It’s poisoned the whole family. They weren’t happy because they had it, and everybody else was unhappy because they didn’t have it. Helen is a prime example.”

  “You always say Helen’s just like your mother.”

  “Well, that’s true, too.”

  Ike waved his hand, dismissing her remarks. It was probably just as well. After a while he said, “Everything makes me so dog tired lately.”

  “I know, Ike. Me too.”

  “Remember that time Abel and I went out looking for those four head of cattle? Abel rode that roan horse Bucko, and I rode Sassy. Remember Sassy?”

  “Yes, Ike. Sassy was a lovely mare. You got yourself a real bargain there.”

  “Three days. We were gone for three days. It snowed. I remember it snowed, and we dug down in the snow and camped.”

  “You didn’t! You found a little cabin! That’s what you told me.”

  “Not the first night. We didn’t find the cabin till the second night. The first night it was snowing and we couldn’t see. We dug down in the snow. I’ve never been so cold.” He paused for a long time. “Abel and I slept in the same bedroll in a hole in the snow.” The beginnings of a snore ruffled in his nose. “We were so tired.” Anna leaned forward. “I was never so tired as then.” She pulled the covers up to his chin and turned out the light. The glow from her hot bath had worn off, and she was chilled again. Fog drifted pale outside the window, cut by the single branch of a black tree. The night was so thick that the other limbs had disappeared. Anna drew the curtain.

  In the dark bowl of her own soft bed, Anna imagined a big yellow fire, consuming seasoned apple logs with a crackle like laughter. She curled up, shoving her hands between her thighs, trying never to touch the cold rim of the sheet. She imagined the fire glowing on her face, reddening her hands and the bodice of her garments, toasting her toes, initiating a glorious sweat at her hairline, at the line of her throat (which, she noticed with a start, she still imagined to be a hollow at the meeting of her collarbones). She imagined throwing even more logs on the fire, and then turning to bask her back in the mounting blaze, careful not to stand too close. Drawing her head under the covers, she imagined turning back to face the conflagration, lifting her arms so that her hands were almost over it, almost in danger of burning. She imagined herself as warm as she could be, warmer than any sensible person would ever want to be. As warm as warm as warm, but the pocket she lay in under the covers was slow in giving up its chill, and close around the fire in her mind was Ike’s midnight snow, so cold that he and the brother he feared and disliked had to cuddle together for survival.

  The fire had become almost a dream, almost the awareness of huddled, not quite warm but welcome sleep, when the phone began to ring. Her first thought was to ignore it, but her second thought was of Ike. If he were to wake, he might be up for hours yet. The phone continued to ring, imperious, clattering. On the floor of the hall, it was somewhere. She stumbled over the phone. The receiver knocked to the floor. Before she could even say “Hello,” a man’s voice demanded, “Who is this? Who are you? Hello?”

  Anna caught her breath. “Who are you?”

  Delighted with a response, the voice became at once purring and meaningful. “I have your number. This is George. Who are you? This is George.” He continued to identify himself and ask her who she was in a tone of voice that implied obscenity, but he said nothing obscene. She hung up, instantly regretful that she had not at least slammed the phone in his ear. More than once she had had obscene phone calls: men who declared what they wanted to do with various parts of her body before she even had the presence of mind to hand the phone to Ike, who said in his naturally angry telephone voice, “Who’s this?” An obscene call without obscenities, though, was perhaps more disconcerting, because it had no reason. “George” had said nothing, only his own name. She wanted to have asked him if he was so stupid that he couldn’t even make a proper obscene phone call, or to have threatened him somehow. She was shaking with cold. She dialed Helen, who answered sleepily. It was not exactly embarrassment that made her unable to speak about the caller after all. She was not exactly lying when she said, “I just feel funny. I can’t describe it.”

  “How’s Daddy?” Helen asked suspiciously, as if Anna might be leading up to telling her something.

  “He’s asleep. He’s fine. It’s me.”

  “Do you want me to come over?” She sounded decidedly reluctant, but then she repeated the offer, this time more genuinely. Yes, Anna did want her to come over, along with Christine and the dog, especially the dog, but in Helen’s voice she heard the putting on of underwear and slacks and coats and hats, the opening of the garage and the warming up of the car, the drive through the forbidding fog, lights and activity and sleepiness everywhere, cups of coffee in the middle of the night, and her own embarrassment at being able to produce nothing to justify all this trouble. And Helen would call Claire and Claire would call Susanna, and everyone would be seized again in a tangle of speculation about what was really wrong, what should really be done. The nurse. Anna coughed briskly into the phone. “It’s nothing. Hearing your voice is enough. It is nothing, really.” It wasn’t nothing, but how to explain the odd effect of all this reminiscing: Susanna hurtling over the crossbar on that swing, Ike and Abel clutched together under a cold and starry sky, Helen herself flipped against a telephone pole like a tiddly wink? How to explain the cold she could not get rid of? Some silly caller who didn’t even say dirty words was the least of it. “Nothing, Helen.”

  “Do you think you can get back to sleep? Call me anytime and we’ll come over, really, Mother.”

  “Thank you, Helen.” Was it clear to Helen how heartfelt this small phrase was? How very unconventional Anna’s gratitude?

  “Okay, Mother. Call me in the morning.”

  “Yes, Helen.”

  When they hung up, Anna crept down the stairs, unaccountably afraid both to turn on the light and not to turn it on. She checked each window and door. Locked, bolted, the windows reassuringly taped against drafts. She wedged a chair against the basement door and at last, in the kitchen, turned on the light. There was nothing she wanted to eat or drink, but she opened the oven door and turned the dial up to 450. The flame came on with a whoosh, and she stretched her hands toward it.

  Helen had been beautiful. One of a kind. No, they had not engendered a race of her; no, people did not say about the Robison girls, “Each one prettier than the last.” Even Christine, daughter of Helen and her certain match, Sam Lakin, was only normally pretty, normally graceful, normally compelling. Christine and Todd were a handsome couple, but nothing like Helen and Sam. Helen had found Sam by running the farthest away, to the Army, to Europe, where the war was ending and Sam was returning after recovery from a chest wound. They met on a troop ship (Helen, two other WACs, and three thousand soldiers). They met again in London, and again in Bavaria, where Helen was photographed engaging in winter sports for army brochures, and Sam was assigned to provisioning refugees and displaced persons. The war was over. When Anna leafed through Life magazines and saw pictures of flattened Europe, every emaciated, homeless human figure reminded her of Helen, sleek, rosy, blond, whose running away had been eminently successful, who wrote, “Saw Geo at last, on our stop over in Paris. He was just walking down the street. He was with Bill Nolan, in fact, and they had seen Frank Miller. I hear that Les Shorter was killed, though. He was in Frank’s regiment. It seems like the whole world, including all of Des Moines, is right here. In Paris saw Notre Dame from a distance, and some other places up close. Lots of destruction. Learning to ski.”

  Claire, who missed Geo and was in a snit for two whole years, said, “I don’t see how she can sound so happy when she’s surrounded by misery and destruction. I think it’s heartless.” From a dry distance, though, Anna thought that Helen must surely have found the center of life in the Alps of Bavaria. Mama had loved the Alps. Up until she decided to tell people she was really from Paris, she had always announced her birthplace as Munich, even though everyone knew she had lived her whole childhood in Hamburg. In Garmisch in 1945, everyone was free, including Helen. All her dreams of the exotic and adventurous had been realized. Anna sighed, though she did not know why. Helen rarely spoke of Germany, and her thoughts did not seem to linger over that time. It was as if Anna were nostalgic in her behalf.

  At the end of her hitch, Helen came home single, cool, and European. She gathered up her paints and drawing supplies, and moved to Chicago, where she rented a small studio and supported herself doing drawings for newspaper ads and department store flyers. Ike was furious. Girls stayed home until they got married, as far as he was concerned, and furthermore, they got married at a reasonable age (younger than twenty-five). Claire was married and living in West Des Moines. On the first anniversary of VJ day, she was pregnant. Not Helen. Ike would grit his teeth and say, “She’s just determined to be different, that’s all it is.”

  Anna went to the studio once, an invited guest, offered tea with bread and butter. It was a pleasant place, with cider-colored floors and a bank of south windows. The telephone rang incessantly, and Helen was proud to show papers and materials and tools she had been secretive about while living at home. Her friends were hardly bohemian. The two Anna met were pregnant, in crisp white piqué maternity blouses of the purest Midwestern style. Her bed, Anna noted, was narrow and virginal, and there was no coffee in the kitchen cupboard. Anna thought Helen might clear away any masculine signs in the bathroom, but surely she would forget that her mother knew she hated coffee. Ike was not mollified when Anna told him these things, and so she didn’t mention Helen’s endless birdsong of plans about going back to Europe to study art, to see the great pieces when they were back in their museums, to immerse herself, simply immerse herself. She would never get married. It wasn’t a vow, just a considered opinion, London, Paris, London, Paris. Susanna got married to get out of the house.

  Anna yawned, at last, and then yawned again. The warmth of the bright blue gas flames crept around her, and their sound comforted her, a low roar. It was not midnight yet. Her eyes drifted closed with the thought of all the luxurious sleeping hours ahead, deep in her old sunken mattress, covered with quilts she had sewn herself, her nose poked into pillowcases she had cross-stitched. It was remarkable how well you could equip yourself over the years, how many stitches you could take in whatever colors you pleased, how many things were left after you had given any number away. Anna turned off the oven, then shoved her hands into the sleeves of her robe. Now, of course, though unmarried and possessed of the wherewithal for any number of years in Europe, Helen was unhappy. Ike had asked about that adjoining door. “I’m cold!” was what he used to say when she awoke to find him creeping into her bed. “Brr! I can’t sleep.” “Go back to your own bed,” she would snap, pretending her anger was the fruit of sudden awakening. Anna put her hands on her knees, and pushed herself to her feet. The night twenty years ago when she tied the doorknob to her bedpost with a stocking, she heard Ike pull at it, making it rattle, and then curse once in a whisper. They never spoke of it afterward, and he never invaded her nest again.