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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.
孩子们走后，我又恢复到以往的生活。我早晨不再做早饭，每天都到意大利熟食店去喝咖啡，吃新出炉的面包卷。回到家以后，我就会坐在靠近前边阳台的窗户的木桌旁，花上几个小时来写东西。窗户外面天色渐暗，后院的集会将会开始，先是音乐声、喊叫声和挑衅声，之后可能会发展成打架声。这时我会感觉到害怕，不是因为人们之间的不友好，而是因为我感到自己不复存在。
In one of these moods, I phoned Sunny, and got the invitation to spend the weekend in the country.
在这些情绪的笼罩下，我拨通了赛妮的电话，并且获得她的邀请去乡下度周末。
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.
“这真美，”我说。但是这沿途的乡村对于我来讲并没有什么意义。这儿的山是一座座绿色的山丘，时而能见着牛群。被水草覆盖的小溪上架着许多矮矮的混凝土桥，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."
“等见到房舍就好了。”赛妮说，“这里实在不太令人赏心悦目。”
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.
她并没有询问我的新生活，或是缘于不便提起，或是出于对我的新生活不赞同。即使是她问了，我也会说谎，至少会编一部分谎话。和过去的生活决裂是很难的，但也是我必须做的。我非常想念孩子们，但总该付出代价。我正在学着解放一个男人以及我自己。我正在学着轻率地对待性的问题，而这对于我又很艰难，因为我起初并非如此，并且我已不再年轻。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.
房屋的砖结构上留下被拆到的阳台的痕迹。赛妮的儿子们在院子里疯闹嬉笑着。上次与赛妮见面时刚出生的3岁的小女儿，从厨房跑出来，停在我们面前，很惊奇地看着我这个陌生人。
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.
赛妮抱起她，我提起行李袋，我们一起走进厨房。厨房里，迈克·麦卡乐姆正在给面包涂番茄酱。
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。”我和迈克几乎异口同声地说。我们笑着，奔向对方，握住对方的双手。
I thought it was your father, I said.
“我还以为是你父亲。”我说。
