Inside, he nearly knocked over the end-table lamp trying to find the switch. When he found it, and clicked the light on, she was leaning back against the doorjamb, grinning at him. Her eye makeup had faded into dark coronas, there was a run in her stockings, and she looked dissolute and utterly ravishing. He wanted to bend her over the sofa and violate her. But then she hiccupped, and put her hand to her mouth, and for a moment he thought she was going to throw up again.

“Come on,” he said, when the danger seemed to have passed. He took her arm. “Let’s get you into bed.”

Three

If they were leaving Sunday, they had done nothing to prepare for it: no washing of sheets, no cleaning the kitchen, no packing. They had not even called their families to let them know they were returning early. Effie shuffled over to the kitchen counter and looked at the “Before You Leave” list Uncle George had made for them—it was long—and hung her head in despair. She’d woken up in the night and was sick again, and Henry had found her, just before noon, asleep in her bathrobe on the sofa downstairs.

“The time is ours,” Henry said. “We can leave Monday, or Tuesday. We don’t have to leave tomorrow. Can’t we give ourselves a day?”

She considered this, and after a moment said he was right. The decision seemed to cheer her. Tomorrow they would get ready to leave, maybe go to church in the morning. Today they would rest. “As God as my witness,” she said, raising her fist to the ceiling, “I will never drink again.”

He didn’t understand at first that she was trying to be funny, mocking Scarlett O’Hara. He laughed a beat too late, and she told him to shut up.

After she’d had a bath, he made buttered toast and they ate it out on the back porch, at a frosted-glass table he’d wiped clean of twigs and leaves. She was wearing her bathrobe, her feet propped up on his chair, her cheeks resting on her knees. He was wearing only his pajama bottoms, the fabric luxurious at his groin. It was a beautiful afternoon, cool and breezy, but his hangover made his skin warm. A line of beech trees bordered one side of the yard, and overnight, it seemed, they had turned brilliant yellow.

“I made a complete fool of myself last night,” Effie said.

“Baby, no. You were charming.” He rubbed her leg, felt the prickly hairs on her calf.

“I feel sordid,” she said, and he laughed, and she lifted her head to glare at him. “Don’t belittle me.”

“I’m not belittling you.”

She was being playful, miserable though she was. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Come on,” he said. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”