The next morning, when Rachel awoke in the dark, Bob was still deep in sleep. Good. He needed the rest. She rolled on her side away from him. She would try to fall back asleep, but she knew she’d fail. School resumed tomorrow, and sure enough, a line of the anticipated events of the morrow paraded in her brain. Marching vividly in the front was the conversation, scheduled for ten o’clock, in which she would inform the parents of sophomore Kimberley Atkins, a girl she loved, that Kimberley’s best interests would be served at a school whose academic demands were more forgiving. How many such fraught conversations had she managed? How many more would she have before she packed it in? The answer to the first question was vague, the second not forthcoming. She got out of bed, dressed quietly in the dark, and went downstairs. Maybe she’d go to her office and catch up on some work. No, she would have to sit down at her desk. She was much too restless.
She heard the soft thud of the New York Times landing on the stoop. She’d take it and a cup of coffee upstairs, and get in bed beside Bob and share the paper when he woke up. Easy because he always read the Business section first, which she never read at all.
Outside, before she even bent over to pick it up, she was struck by the early morning smells, free of pollution, cleansed by the night. Of snow, still dry in the biting cold of dawn. She spread her arms to the growing light. No way was she going back to bed. She would go skiing. That would cure her restlessness. By using it. On her favorite route beside the river. She’d be back in an hour, two at the most.
She carried the paper inside and left it on the kitchen counter for when Bob woke up. In the garage, donning her ski pants, she wondered if Sylvia would want to come with her. No, she’d want to sleep, might even be irritated to be woken up. It was the last morning free to sleep late. But the truth was Rachel didn’t need anybody’s company, not even her daughter’s. She needed to be alone, to ski fast and headlong and without conversation.
Headlong was what she was when, a few minutes later, she saw the glint of the river up ahead and, reaching it, turned to the right on the trail, following the river on its southward tumble toward the Sound, her favorite route. Sylvia’s too. Except that once.
A few minutes later, she smelled the smoke. She told herself it was just her imagination. Then she came around the bend and, surprised that she wasn’t surprised, she saw him. Sylvia’s homeless man. She stopped. He was squatting beside a fire, frying something on the side of his axe. He was even thinner than when she saw him last, his clothes so loose on him, like luffing sails. She thought of clowns. His yellow hair came down over his ears beneath a black watch cap. She still had no idea how old he was.
Then she saw his lean-to. It sagged, looked tired, ready to fall down, its covering of pine boughs flecked with brown. He turned and they looked at each other. His eyes were deep in their sockets, rimmed with shadow. He didn’t speak, as if he wanted her first to note where he lived.
How cold you must be without a coat! she thought. He nodded. He must have sold it so he could eat. Just a sweater over some kind of shirt? He nodded again. This harmless, vulnerable man was waiting for her to say I know who you are. She shook her head. Because now she understood: it wasn’t just Bob who was making a move; it was Sylvia too. Following her heart to wherever it would take her. Her own mother wasn’t going to get in the way.
Astounded by her own decision, she turned and fled.