"Suppertime almost, but I don't have anything fixed-I-"

"Don't you want me to stay?"

She looked around to where Swan was kneeling with one arm around the dog's neck. They might have been whispering together or crying together. The impulse to tell Lowry that this child was his was so strong in Clara that for a moment she could not speak at all. Then she said, "You can come in. I'll feed you. He isn't coming over tonight."

"That would be real kind of you."

"You're probably hungry."

"I'm hungry."

"You look tired-you've been driving a long time."

"That's right."

At the door her foot slipped and Lowry had to catch her. "Swan, come on in," she called. The boy was waiting on the path, his clever, silent face turned toward them. Then Clara said, confused, "No, never mind. You don't need to-it's hot inside." She started to cry. It had something to do with her foot slipping on her own doorstep-mixing her up, frightening her. Lowry laughed and put his hands on her waist and pushed her up into the house.

"This is nice," he said, "but Revere could do better for you."

"I know that."

"Don't you mind, then?"

"I don't want anything else. I told him to stop buying me things a long time ago."

He walked through the kitchen and looked into the parlor. There Clara's plants were everywhere, on the windowsills and on tables- broad, flat leaves, ferns, tiny budlike leaves, violets you might almost miss if you didn't look closely enough. She saw Lowry looking at them. "You have a house all your own now," he said.

Clara followed him into the parlor where it was cool. She was still crying, angrily. Lowry turned and said, "I see you got grown up."

"Yes."

"When did that happen?"

"After you left."

"Not before?"

"No."

"They said you've been with him a long time. Four years, maybe? That's a right long time, it's like being married."

"Yes," Clara said.

"You like him all right?"

"Yes."

"What's this here?" And he reached up to take hold of the small gold heart she wore on a chain around her neck. "So he gives you nice things. This is expensive, right?"

"I don't know."

"What about his other wife?"

"He's only got one wife."

"What about his other sons?"

"I don't know."

"They don't mind you?"

"I suppose they hate me-so what?"

"Doesn't it bother you?"

"Why should it?"

"Being out here like this-for him to come visit when he wants."

"You used to do that too," Clara said, pulling away. He let go of the heart. "I suppose you forgot all that."

"I didn't forget anything," Lowry said. "That's why I'm here."

Then the trembling started in her, a rigid violent trembling that began far down on her spine and pa.s.sed up her back to her shoulders and arms, a feeling she had never known she could have. All those years with Revere were being swept out into sight and considered and were maybe going to be swept out the back door, as if with a broom Clara herself was whisking about impatiently.

"Let me get you a beer," Clara said.

"Are you cold?"

"For Christ's sake, no," she said, looking away. "It's summer out." She felt the shivering start again and made herself rigid. Lowry sat down and she went to the refrigerator and got two bottles out. At the window she saw Swan by one of the barns, alone and lonely, a child without other children, with a mother who was now about to desert him and betray him, just as she must have always known she would. And the worst betrayal of all would be her giving him this father who had come down the lane without even driving up, apologizing for nothing and already bossing them around. She saw Lowry through the doorway, his legs outspread and his hands fallen idly across his flat stomach.

She sat on the arm of his chair. Drinking together like this made them quiet, quieted something in her. Lowry said, "I went to Mexico and got married."

"You what?"

"Got married."

Clara tried to keep her voice steady. "Where is your wife, then?"

"I don't know."

"Well-that's nice."

"We got rid of each other before the war. She was trying to teach down there, just for something to do. She was from Dallas. I guess," he said, closing his eyes and pressing the bottle against them, "I guess we were in love, then something happened. She kept at me, she kept worrying. She was afraid I went after other women."

"What was she like?"

"I don't know. What are people like? I don't know what anyone is like," he said. "She had dark hair."

"Oh."

"This was all a while ago. She divorced me."

"Divorced?"

The word was so strange, so legal, it made her think of police and courthouses and judges. She stared at Lowry as if she might be able to see the change this divorce had made in him.

"Are you all right now-are you happy?" she said.

Lowry laughed. She saw the lines at the corners of his mouth and wondered for a dazed instant who this strange man was.

"That depends on you, honey."

"But what do you want from me? You son of a b.i.t.c.h," she said, bitterly. "I'm a mother now, I have a kid. I'm going to be married too."

"That's nice."

"I am, he's going to marry me."

"When is this going to take place?"

"Well, in a few years. Sometime."

"When?"

"When his wife dies."

Lowry grinned without there being anything funny. "So you're waiting around here while she dies, huh? They said in town she was sick but she'd been sick for ten years. You want to wait another ten years?"

"I like it here."

"Stuck out here by yourself ?"

"I'm not by myself, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. I've got Swan. I've got Revere too," she added. "There was nothing else I ever wanted in my life but a place to live, a nice place I could fix up. I have a dog too and some cats. And all my plants-and my curtains there that I sewed-"

"It's nice, Clara."

"Sure it's nice," she said. She drank from the bottle. "You're not going to take this away from me."

"You could just leave it, yourself."

"What about Swan?"

"He comes too."

"Where do you think you're going, then? You're so G.o.dd.a.m.n smart. You always had plans, you always knew where you were going," Clara said. She bit at the neck of the bottle, hard. Lowry was watching her as if he felt sorry for her, suddenly, after all these years, and as if the emotion were a little surprising to him. "You came and went, you drove up and you drove away, I couldn't think of anything but you and so you went away and that was that- The h.e.l.l with me. You never thought about anybody but yourself."

"Don't be mad, honey."

"You're a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d, isn't that true? You go off and leave me and come back, what is it, four years later? And I'm supposed to love you, I'm supposed to go with you-to the beach again maybe for three days. Then you'll give me and the kid a ride back and kick us out-"

Lowry sat back in the chair. He looked tired.

"I didn't think about you like that, honey," he said. "I mean-the way I thought about the woman I married."

"You don't need to tell me."

"I wanted something else, honey. I couldn't talk to you."

"But you could to that woman down there, huh?"

"Yes."

"Is that why you left her? If you like her so much go on back and find her," Clara said furiously.

"I don't want her."

"Why the h.e.l.l do you want me?"

"I'm tired of talking."

"What? What does that mean?"

"I'm tired of talking, of thinking the way she did. I'm tired of thinking."

Clara raised the bottle to her mouth again, trying to rid herself of that trembling she hated so. She felt that her body was moving off from her, going its own way and paying no attention to what she wanted.

"I joined the Army, honey," he said. "I came back to the States and enlisted just in time."

"You what?"

"I've been over in Europe, you know where that is? I want somebody who doesn't know where that is," he said. He was not smiling. He caressed Clara's arm and she did not move it away; she watched his hand moving on her skin. There were tufted blond hairs on the backs of his fingers and she thought that she remembered them, yes, she remembered every one of them. His fingernails were thick and milky, ridged just a little with dirt. Lowry was staring at her. "You've changed quite a bit, Clara. You really are a woman now."

Clara looked away.

"I know why he loves you. I don't blame him. But he's already married and he has a family-he won't be able to do anything for you. You know that. You could never fit in with those people, you're nothing at all like them. He won't marry you."

"Shut up about that."

"Clara, you know I'm telling the truth."

"He loves me. And anyway this is none of your-"

"But sitting around here waiting for someone to die-a woman you don't even know-"

"I don't know her but I hate her," Clara said viciously.

Lowry was amused at this. "How can you hate her if you don't know her?"