OCR Text |
Show He didn't answer. He knew that with this, Julia's defensiveness, their little scene was over; but for a moment he allowed his mind to carry on, to picture Tia's body which showed little evidence of having had not one but three children; her smooth stomach and still firm breasts, thighs which contracted with a kind of muscular willingness he would more have expected, it was true, of a high school cheerleader. He was glad he was no longer meeting her. "Are you sure you wouldn't like a drink?" Julia said after a moment; clearly a proposition that she would think no more about it if he wouldn't. "No," he said. "No thanks, not right now." Philip stared out the kitchen window. "It might cheer you up." Stared out across the brown grass that spread like a worn and faded blanket to McAllister's burnt field of soybeans, and their own small plot beside the barn where in the spring they had spent two days planting vegetables. Why hadn't he noticed it before? "The garden is dead," he announced. "It's been dead for a week," said Julia softly. "Why didn't you tell me?" "Oh Philip, I shouldn't have to point something like that out to you." "Maybe we could have watered it or something." "No, it never had a chance. If the drought hadn't got it, the bugs or weeds would have. We didn't take care of it, that's all. It doesn't matter." |