Adultery & Other Choices Read Online Free Page A

everything.’
    â€˜Why didn’t he tell me himself? Is that what all that monkey business was about at supper?’
    â€˜He was afraid to.’
    â€˜Afraid to? Did he tell you that?’
    â€˜No, he—’
    â€˜Did he ask you to ask me?’
    â€˜No, I just—’
    â€˜Why is my son afraid of me? Can you tell me that? I’ve spanked that boy three times in ten years. What’s he afraid of?’
    â€˜He’s very sensitive.’
    â€˜Sensitive. If he’s so sensitive why doesn’t he know—Never mind: do they have the horns at school?’
    â€˜You have to buy one.’
    â€˜Buy one.’
    â€˜Or maybe rent one.’
    â€˜Or maybe rent one. Goddamn.’
    â€˜It means a lot to him. He’ll be in the high school band. Maybe he can get a college scholarship.’
    â€˜Goddamn,’ his father said.
    At breakfast his father was reading the paper. Paul waited. He had finished his oatmeal and milk and toast, the girls had gone to brush their teeth, his mother was putting the dishes in the sink, and finally he rose to leave too when his father lowered the paper and looked at him.
    â€˜What’s this your mother tells me about a French horn?’
    The blue eyes were gazing into his and he could see in them the silence when he and his father were trapped together in a car, and the relief he felt at all his father’s departures and the fear at his arrivals.
    â€˜I decided not to,’ Paul said. ‘It costs too much.’
    â€˜Wait a minute: that’s not what I asked. Do you want to play the horn?’
    â€˜I guess so.’
    â€˜Son, I can buy a horn; I can borrow for that. Do you or don’t you want to learn to play it.’
    â€˜Yesterday you wanted to,’ his mother said, and he looked at her. She quickly nodded her head, then gestured with it toward his father, then nodded again. In one of his frequent daydreams he was captured by a band of amazons and taken to a tropical island where they lived; they were tall and lovely and they fed him and cared for him and he could not leave. There was some threatening yet attractive mystery about them too, as if they all shared a secret and it had to do with him; perhaps one morning they would tie him to an altar and sacrifice him to the sun; his heart plucked out, his soul would rise above the beautiful women. He wished he were with them now.
    â€˜Yes, I’d like to.’ he said.
    â€˜All right,’ his father said, the paper rising into place again; then from behind it he muttered: ‘Why didn’t you say so.’
    Paul stood there until he was sure his father was reading again and was not waiting for an answer.
    Twice a week Paul and Eddie arrived at school carrying their cased horns bumping against their legs and in the afternoon, after an hour’s lesson, walked home with them. Paul was a victim of newspaper and magazine cartoons. Why hadn’t he’d thought of the size of the horn? In cartoons only the inept carried large instruments, usually tubas, and their practicing made cats and dogs howl, neighbors shout, close windows, throw old shoes. Now when he walked home carrying the horn, he was no longer anonymous: anyone driving by could see what he was. After supper he went to his room and closed the door and tried to play the notes. The horn was silver with a shiny brass bell and holding it and depressing its valves smelling of oil he wished he could give it the love it deserved. His father had brought it home and opened the case on the dining room table and displayed for Paul and his sisters and mother the horn nestled in red felt. A hundred dollars, he said; I hope it’s worth it. Oh let’s don’t talk about money, Paul’s mother said; I hate the dirty old stuff. Two days later Eddie’s father bought a used horn, a gold one with two dents on the bell, and Paul felt deceived.
    Sitting in his room he looked at the notes on the