After him she sobbed curses he had not heard in years, old-country curses from their childhood: Grow, oh shall you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground. Like the hide of a drum shall you be, beaten in life, beaten in death. Oh shall you be like a chandelier, to hang, and to burn. . . .
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She was not in their bed when he came back. She lay on the cot on the sun porch. All week she did not speak or come near him; nor did he try to make peace or care for her.
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He slept badly, so used to her next to him. After all the years, old harmonies and dependencies deep in their bodies; she curled to him, or he coiled to her, each warmed, warming, turning as the other turned, the nights a long embrace.
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It was not the empty bed or the storm that woke him, but a faint singing.
She
was singing. Shaking off the drops of rain, the lightning riving her lifted face, he saw her so; the cot covers on the floor.
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''This is a private concert?" he asked. "Come in, you are wet."
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"I can breathe now," she answered; "my lungs are rich." Though indeed the sound was hardly a breath.
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"Come in, come in." Loosing the bamboo shades. "Look how wet you are." Half helping, half carrying her, still faint-breathing her song.
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A Russian love song of fifty years ago.
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He had found a buyer, but before he told her, he called together those children who were close enough to come. Paul, of course, Sammy from New Jersey, Hannah from Connecticut, Vivi from Ohio.
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With a kindling of energy for her beloved visitors,
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