纽约客小说：《第一任丈夫》（5）
卡莱布说：“大概应该把她留在外面？”
Caleb said, “Maybe you should leave her out there?”
“如果没在下雪的话，的确是个不错的主意。现下还有‘那事儿’，”威廉说，“不能让她坐在自己的秽物上。”这句话引得卡莱布大笑起来，是那种出乎意料的开心明快。他会翻来覆去地重复这个说法，重复好几天，用其中蕴含的那种不带粗俗字眼儿的幽默感自娱自乐。
“It’d be tempting if there weren’t snow. And then there’s that one,” William said, “sitting in her own filth.” This made Caleb laugh, a bright burst of surprised happiness. He would repeat this expression for days, amusing himself with its perfectly droll un-profaneness.
拉维去给小女孩们换尿片，威廉接替她下强手棋。“这堆钱是干嘛的？”他问的是免费停车场的钱。规则里没有这条，但这是传统。威廉的小孩都是青春期的男孩子，在高中里踢足球。他是那种喜欢团队和规则的父亲。如果卡莱布是他儿子，他会给他把头发剃成板寸，而且绝对不可能允许他玩一整晚强手棋。要是非玩不可也是比较庄重的那种棋，比如国际象棋。
William took over the Monopoly game while Lovey attended to diapers. “What is that pile of cash doing there?” he asked, of the Free Parking money. It wasn’t in the rules, but it was tradition. William’s children were teen-age boys who played high-school football. That was the sort of father he’d been, one who enjoyed a team and rules. If Caleb had been his son, he’d have had a bristly haircut and would never have been allowed to stay up all night playing Monopoly. If he’d had to play a board game, it would have been something dignified, like chess.
拉维带着两个干干净净的女孩回来，卡莱布的嘴唇在颤抖，威廉没必要留意到这一点，因为他只是替别人玩，执行公平竞赛。她注意到，免费停车场的费用没有了。
By the time Lovey got back with the freshly clothed girls, Caleb’s lip was trembling, something William wouldn’t necessarily notice, since he was playing along just to be a good sport, a place-holder. The Free Parking money was gone, she noted.
拉维放任希利亚把整个棋盘踢到地板上，卡片和棋子稀里哗啦撒了一地，钞票飘飘扬扬。
Lovey let Celia knock the whole enterprise to the floor, a glorious clattering spill of cards and tokens and fluttering cash.
“这是天意。”威廉宣布。他抻抻腰，抓抓痒，喝完了他的咖啡，了然地冲拉维扬起眉毛，又揉了揉卡莱布的头发，随后便消失在浴室里。等他回来，游戏已经重新开始，拉维差不多输得一穷二白。
“An act of God,” William declared. He stretched and scratched, finished his coffee, gave Lovey a knowing lift of his brow and Caleb a ruffling of his hair, then disappeared into the shower. By the time he returned, the game was under way again and Lovey was nearly destitute.
“你没救了，宝贝。”威廉这么说着，坐在电脑前浏览新闻。“嘿，瞧这个。”他把屏幕转过来让拉维看。拉维盯着那张 Facebook 上的照片仔细看了几秒钟：伯纳蒂特穿着短裙，拿着香烟和啤酒瓶，亚戎在她右边，左边是另一个男人，他们两个一起搂着她，以一幅明目张胆的磕嗨了、喝高了的状态。“阿尔伯克基城的迷幻狂潮！”说明文字这样写道。发布时间是三十分钟前。伯纳蒂特在少女时代就常常来找拉维，消磨时间，哭泣，道歉发誓要悔改，惧怕她那喜怒无常的父亲，一遍又一遍地说着只有拉维能理解她。当时那女孩就是照片上那个样子，磕过药的迷幻表情，身边同样围绕着游手好闲的少年，她就是无法抵御那种满不在乎的魅力。突然之间，照片消失了。就仿佛只是拉维的想象、是她梦见的东西一样。“她给删了，”威廉说，“当然。她想起来你会看见——她当然要删了。”
You’re hopeless, honey,” William said, settling at his computer for the news. “Hey, look,” he said, swinging the screen around for Lovey to see. For a few seconds, Lovey studied the Facebook photograph: Bernadette in a short dress, holding a cigarette and a beer bottle, Aaron to her right, another man to her left, the two of them equally in possession of her in a flagrantly drugged and drunken state. “Freak blizzard in Duke City!” the caption read, the time imprint only thirty minutes earlier. As a teen-ager, Bernadette had come to Lovey on many an occasion, wasted and weeping, repentant and apologetic, afraid of her mercurial father, claiming again and again that only Lovey understood her. That same girl was in the photograph, her loose sedated face, flanked by the same idle boys, whose reckless seduction she could not resist. And then suddenly the photograph was gone. As if it had been a product of Lovey’s imagination, something she had dreamed. “She took it down,” William said. “Of course. She realized you’d see it—of course she took it down.”
“什么？”卡莱布在观察究竟发生了什么。
“What?” Caleb asked, monitoring what was happening.
“我们问问你妈妈上学的事情吧，”拉维说，“没准儿你今天不用去了。”
“Let’s check with your mom about school,” Lovey said. “Maybe you can take the day off.”
“我不想旷课。”
“I don’t want to miss school.”
“没准儿今天下雪停课呢。”
“Maybe it’ll be a snow day.”
伯纳蒂特一接电话，拉维立刻就听出她还醉着。“拉维，”她说，“对不起。有个好消息是我找到他了，他没事，但还有个坏消息，我们得谈谈——又到真相大白的时候了。”
When Bernadette answered, Lovey understood immediately that she was still drunk. “Lovey,” she said. “I’m sorry. The good news is I found him, he’s fine, but the bad news is we have to talk—it’s time to come to Jesus, again.”
拉维的第一任丈夫偷走了她最好的年华，让她被爱情迷得神魂颠倒；如果不是他，那时候她也许都能生养自己的孩子了。他愚弄了她，她想。他绑架了她，等到为时已晚再放她走。她这样告诉自己，并且相信了其中大部分。而三个继女中只有伯纳蒂特完全站在她这边。另外两个女孩平等待人，不做评判，探望父亲，接受新的跟她们一样大的继母。只有任性的伯纳蒂特跟父亲一刀两断。只有忠诚的伯纳蒂特站到了拉维这边。
Lovey’s first husband had stolen her best years, keeping her captive during the time that she might, in some other circumstance, have delivered children of her own. He’d fooled her, she thought. He’d held her hostage and then released her when it was too late. That was the story she told herself and mostly believed. And Bernadette alone of the three girls subscribed to it as well. The others had split their loyalty equally, judging nobody, visiting their father, accepting their second stepmother, who was the same age as they. Only impulsive Bernadette had severed ties. Only loyal Bernadette had stood by Lovey.
“等她清醒过来再送孩子们回去，”威廉建议道，“等他们两个都清醒过来再说。你们几个看看电视怎么样？”他问孩子们，“我给你们按到《猫和老鼠》，怎么样？”
“Let her sober up before you take the kids home,” William advised. “Let them both sober up. How about you guys go watch TV?” he asked the children. “How’s about I set up some ‘Tom and Jerry’?”
拉维是由朋友介绍认识的威廉，每个人都觉得他们两个很合适。“年纪合适。”她的朋友和家人一致同意，很高兴拉维能重新振作精神、再度步入婚姻。父母始终对她的第一次婚姻不满，每次去看他们都难免尴尬和悲叹，因为没有真正的外孙，那三个半路冒出来的继女不太理睬他们。在别人眼里，拉维能脱身很是幸运，她那年长的丈夫尚未变成又一个上年纪的父辈，无可避免的疾病和衰老尚未降临。无可避免的必然还在前头，她想。如今他六十四岁，他的新妻三十多岁，是个无可否认的美人。年轻。鲜嫩。
Lovey had met William through friends, a match everyone approved of. “Age- appropriate,” her friends and family had agreed, pleased to have Lovey squarely tucked away again, married. Her parents had never been happy about her first marriage, had never visited without awkwardness and sad sighs over the terrible absence of true grandchildren, the presence of these three half- time stepdaughters who did not particularly respond to them. In everyone else’s view, Lovey was lucky to have got out before her older husband became like a third aging parent, before the inevitable illness and decline. Those eventualities were still ahead, she supposed. He was sixty-four now, his new wife in her thirties, an undeniably beautiful woman. Young. Fresh.
那么威廉呢？拉维足够爱他，以成年人的方式爱着他，她想，不是那种狂热又糊涂的灭顶沉溺，她曾经草率地投入那样的爱情就像投入水中，毫不了解自己会付出何等的代价。一切都走到尽头，那种爱情险些杀死她。她曾觉得自己正在衰亡。她再也不会那样爱别人了，再也不会将自己置于那般险境。她明白威廉同样是曾被抛弃，他的前妻同样带给他灭顶之感，她也明白如今他清醒地有所意识，他爱拉维是在进行一种报复——或者可以说，仅仅是因为相信前妻还在关注自己，于是他需要证明自己得以幸存，越过越好，是胜利者。无论如何，一个胜利者。
And William? Lovey loved him well enough, in the way of adulthood, she thought, not in the feverish former manner of witless drowning immersion, that love she’d fallen into heedlessly, as if into a body of water, with no idea of what such a thing could cost her. It had nearly killed her, when all was said and done. Meaning she’d felt like dying. She would never be that kind of lover again, never endanger herself that way again. And she understood that William, too, had been disposed of, that his ex-wife had had a similar nuclear potency for him, and that he loved Lovey now with the conscious intensity of somebody who was aware that he was exacting a kind of revenge—or, perhaps, simply acting in the belief that his ex was paying attention, that he had a need to prove that he’d survive and thrive, the victor. A victor, anyway.
“我觉得自己像个傻瓜，”她在孩子们听不到的地方对威廉说，“我怎么能让她这么对我？”
“I feel like an idiot,” she told William, once the children were out of earshot. “How could I let her do this to me?”
“其实她对你做了什么呢？”他说，“我的意思是，如果她愿意，她大可以叫你过去照看孩子。她可以叫你去她家里陪他们，你会去的。或者她也可以说他们要出去约会什么的。不管她说什么，你都会过去陪孩子们过夜，所以说，真的没什么不一样的。你想想看。”
“What has she done, really?” he said. “I mean, she could have got you to babysit, if she’d wanted. She could have asked you to stay over at her house with them, and you would have. Or she could have told you they were going on a date night or something. Either way, you would have hung out with the kids overnight, so it’s really not so different. When you think about it.”
“我猜，我是以为她信任我来着。”
“I guess I thought she trusted me.”
“她把自己的孩子留在你身边。她要去喝酒的时候给你打电话。这样的信任还不够，你还想要多少？”
“She left her children with you. She called you when she felt like getting trashed. How much more trust do you want?”
“我还是觉得好傻。”
“I still feel like a fool.”
“别纠结了。一切都好。今晚见。”他又吻了吻她的脸颊，这次带着薄荷味儿。又一次，拉维又一次想起了她的第一任丈夫——他那苹果味儿的嘴巴，他的吻带着汹涌的欲望使她瘫软，至今依旧，至今依旧，他甚至都不在这儿。
“Don’t beat yourself up. Everything’s fine. See you tonight.” He provided another peck on the cheek, this time of the minty variety. And, once again, Lovey thought of her first husband—his apple-flavored mouth, his kisses that could paralyze her with brutal desire, still, still, even in absentia.
卡莱布从电视机前回到了厨房，来转达希利亚的要求。“她想吃麦圈。我告诉她起居室里没有牛奶，她就用遥控器砸我。”他摸着前额。他太瘦弱，现在他的眼睛周围出现了黑眼圈。拉维原本应该让他上床睡觉的。动画片的声音从起居室传过来。希利亚喜欢把电视的音量调高；她可能是有点儿耳聋，所以嚷嚷的声音那么大——拉维得跟伯纳蒂特说说这种可能性。等下次见到伯纳蒂特就说。
Caleb came back from the television to put in a request from Celia. “She wants Cheerios. I told her no milk in the living room, then she threw the remote at me.” He touched his forehead. He was too thin, and now he had dark circles under his eyes. Lovey should have made him go to bed. From the living room came the ruckus of cartoon violence. The three-year-old liked to turn up the volume; maybe she was loud because she was a little deaf—Lovey would have to mention that possibility to Bernadette. When she next saw Bernadette.
这个时候，卡莱布在检查棋盘。“拉维，”他说，“你的钱上哪儿去了？”
Meanwhile, Caleb was checking the game board. “Lovey,” he said, “what happened to all your money?”
“你是指什么？”
“What do you mean?”
他的脸庞突然变得暴怒，他的愤怒和他的笑声同样罕见，这次冲着她来了。“别故意让我赢，”他命令道，“你居然故意让我赢！”
His face was suddenly furious, his rage as rare as his laughter, and this time aimed at her. “Don’t let me win,” he demanded. “Don’t you dare let me win!”
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