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I went back to living as I had lived before they came. I stopped cooking breakfast and went out every morning to get coffee and fresh rolls at the Italian deli. Back home, I would sit and write for hours at a wooden table under the windows of a former sun porch. Outside the windows, as it got dark, the back-yard parties would begin, with music and shouting and provocations that later might develop into fights, and I would be frightened, not of any hostility but of a kind of nonexistence.
孩子們走后，我又恢復到以往的生活。我早晨不再做早飯，每天都到意大利熟食店去喝咖啡，吃新出爐的面包卷。回到家以后，我就會坐在靠近前邊陽臺的窗戶的木桌旁，花上幾個小時來寫東西。窗戶外面天色漸暗，后院的集會將會開始，先是音樂聲、喊叫聲和挑釁聲，之后可能會發展成打架聲。這時我會感覺到害怕，不是因為人們之間的不友好，而是因為我感到自己不復存在。
In one of these moods, I phoned Sunny, and got the invitation to spend the weekend in the country.
在這些情緒的籠罩下，我撥通了賽妮的電話，并且獲得她的邀請去鄉下度周末。
It's beautiful here, I said. But the country we were driving through meant nothing to me. The hills were a series of green bumps, some with cows. There were low concrete bridges over weed-covered streams. Hay was harvested in a new way, rolled up and left in the fields.
“這真美，”我說。但是這沿途的鄉村對于我來講并沒有什么意義。這兒的山是一座座綠色的山丘，時而能見著牛群。被水草覆蓋的小溪上架著許多矮矮的混凝土橋，大摞的卷成垛的干草堆在田地里。
Wait till you see the house, Sunny said. "It's squalid."
“等見到房舍就好了。”賽妮說，“這里實在不太令人賞心悅目。”
She did not ask me—was it delicacy or disapproval?—about my new life. I would have told her lies, anyway, or half lies. It was hard to make the break but it had to be done. I miss the children terribly but there is always a price to be paid. I am learning to leave a man free and to be free myself. I am learning to take sex lightly, which is hard for me because that's not the way I started out and I'm not young, but I am learning.
她并沒有詢問我的新生活，或是緣于不便提起，或是出于對我的新生活不贊同。即使是她問了，我也會說謊，至少會編一部分謊話。和過去的生活決裂是很難的，但也是我必須做的。我非常想念孩子們，但總該付出代價。我正在學著解放一個男人以及我自己。我正在學著輕率地對待性的問題，而這對于我又很艱難，因為我起初并非如此，并且我已不再年輕。但是我正在努力。
The bricks of the house showed a scar where a veranda had been torn away. Sunny's boys were tromping around in the yard. The three-year-old girl born since I'd last seen Sunny came running out of kitchen door and then halted, surprised at the sight of a stranger.
房屋的磚結構上留下被拆到的陽臺的痕跡。賽妮的兒子們在院子里瘋鬧嬉笑著。上次與賽妮見面時剛出生的3歲的小女兒，從廚房跑出來，停在我們面前，很驚奇地看著我這個陌生人。
Sunny picked her up and I took up my overnight bag and we walked into the kitchen, where Mike McCallum was spreading ketchup on a piece of bread.
賽妮抱起她，我提起行李袋，我們一起走進廚房。廚房里，邁克·麥卡樂姆正在給面包涂番茄醬。
It's you, we said, almost on the same breath. We laughed, I rushed toward him and he moved toward me. We shook hands.
“是你。”我和邁克幾乎異口同聲地說。我們笑著，奔向對方，握住對方的雙手。
I thought it was your father, I said.
“我還以為是你父親。”我說。
