The Actor and the Housewife

by Shannon Hale

  Fiona nodded, absently rubbing her own chest.

  “And I keep thinking,” Polly said, “about how Dad asked me to come out in the garage and help him restring his fishing pole. He didn’t really need my help, I could tell. He just wanted some company. And I said no because I was watching TV.”

  “When was this?”

  “When I was in third grade.”

  “Oh, honey. That was so long ago, and he knew you loved him. You had so many good hours together, that one time doesn’t matter.”

  “It feels like it does,” Polly said, chin quivering.

  “I know, sweetie. Let’s put a name to it—guilt. That one will get you too, just as nasty as heartbreak and anger, but sneakier. It’ll skulk up behind you and bite your ankles.”

  “Like a hyena,” Sam offered. “That’s how they down their prey. They bite their ankles so they can’t run away.”

  “Hamstring ’em,” Hyrum said, his eyes still on his soup.

  Becky was careful to keep her voice even so Hyrum wouldn’t suspect how happy she was that he’d spoken. “Exactly. That’s perfect. Guilt is the hyena that’ll lunge from behind and hamstring you.”

  “And hobble you so you can’t walk,” Polly said.

  “Or even stand,” Fiona said.

  Becky nodded. “Sam, if you were lost in an African night and you saw the glint of hyena eyes in the brush and knew they were coming for you, what would you do?”

  Sam scooted up taller. “I’d kick ’em! I’d keep kicking back until I heard their yelps. Hyenas are the cowards of the animal kingdom, you know. They only attack easy prey. One good boot . . .” Sam kicked at the air. “Oof!”

  “That’s my boy. Will you do it for Polly?”

  Becky pulled Polly, still on her seat, away from the table and Sam circled around, kicking at imaginary hyenas.

  “Yay! Hi-yay!”

  Fiona joined him (she was such a good sport) and Becky too, and the three of them did a pagan dance around Polly, kicking and hollering. Polly giggled once. Hyrum watched from his chair, arms folded, but he didn’t leave for his room.

  Becky’s heart was eased a tiny amount by the sound defeat of the hyenas, and so her guard was down. When she was brushing her teeth that night, she looked at the mirror and an unbidden thought leaped into her head: I won’t have to clean Mike’s toothpaste spittle off the mirror anymore.

  The thought caught in her throat like a fish bone. Defiantly she thought, Or hang up his coat, or remind him to return his library books, or cook his eggplant—his stupid, slimy eggplant. She went on, counting fifty things she’d never have to do again, ticking off each one as if jabbing herself with a needle. Because it was her fault, somehow. She should have been able to keep him alive, somehow. She’d failed him; she’d failed the whole family. And she wanted to feel all the pain she deserved. All the pain in the world. Let it press down on her, let it crush her under its hard heel, let it burrow inside her bones, sputter and seethe and burn bone to ash.

  She repeated this ritual each night and went to bed feeling chafed and bloodied and hopeless. Some days she toyed with the idea of blaming God, but it was futile. Becky had always believed that God had a master plan, an understanding beyond her ken. Blaming him for any suffering in life made as much sense as Hyrum blaming her for a scraped knee. “You brought me into this life, so any pain I feel is your fault!” There was some attraction to this philosophy, but neither her logic nor her faith would allow it. Darn it. No, that wasn’t satisfying enough.

  “Damn it,” she said aloud. Then she got bolder, using words only Melissa said in her hearing, shouting phrases even Felix avoided. She swore and spit and cursed till her face turned red.

  It didn’t help.

  But for the kids, she was still a rock. At dinner each night, she had them name the zoological onslaught of their pain. Sorrow, they decided, was a raven, dark as night, that perched on your shoulder and ate away at your heart. Grief, as opposed to sorrow, was a crow that sat on your other shoulder and pecked at your eyes so you couldn’t see clearly. Anger was a rhinoceros that gored you from behind, spurring you to holler and run.

  “What are you feeling today, Sam?” Becky would ask.

  “Angry,” he’d say. Sam was mostly angry, because he liked to fight the rhinoceros, which involved imaginary weapons. Though one night he admitted that he was sad—an enormous toad sitting on his head, making him feel wet and cold and too weighed down to move. The only way to fight the sadness toad was with lots and lots of hugs.

  Hyrum’s patience couldn’t withstand the sadness toad. Hyrum went to his room.

  Sam played along with his mother’s ritual, and Fiona did too. Polly mostly did. Usually Hyrum watched. Sometimes one of the kids would ask, “What about you, Mom?”

  So Becky said, “The anger rhino is goading me because in this life my kids don’t get to see their father anymore,” or “The worry scorpion has got me to night, crawling under my clothes and stinging, because Hyrum is so quiet,” or dozens of other worries and sorrows about her kids. That’s all she would allow herself.

  During the daylight hours, her sole concern was their comfort. But at night, with the kids asleep, she entered her bedroom and faced her old nemeses—silence and solitude. That’s where the smoldering grief flared up and consumed her to ash over and over again. She had a great deal of sympathy for Prometheus and wondered how often he wished that liver would just stay eaten.

  With blaming God not an option, of course she blamed herself. She shouldn’t have bought Teflon pans or served bacon on Saturday mornings or allowed the million other innocuous carcinogens into their home. Or she should’ve sensed Mike’s illness earlier. Or loved him enough to prevent anything bad from ever happening. Mike’s death was her fault, so she wasn’t allowed the honest pain of grieving. She deserved nothing more than being turned into a pillar of salt.

  Please, God, turn me into a pillar of salt.

  And so she hardened, and stilled, and while others might not have found her any more savory than usual, she felt the crackle and shift in her bones, the numbness settle into her skin. And she fancied if she moved too quickly or felt too much, she would crumble and fall apart.

  “You should talk more,” Becky’s mother said, nestled close beside her on the couch. She came over almost every morning now, so Becky wouldn’t be alone while the kids were at school. “I’m afraid you’re not taking care of yourself.”

  “I showered today,” Becky offered.

  “Your hair is still shiny, even at your age.” Alice smoothed her daughter’s hair, her blue eyes wet. “Mine went dull at thirty. You are so pretty.”

  “Mom . . .”

  “You are.”

  She pulled Becky into her, hugged her, pressing her lips to the top of her head. And Becky sighed into the embrace. It was good, a touch that she needed. Alice comforted that Becky who was still a little girl, soothed her tender part, her innocent part. But the Becky who had failed her children and let her husband die would not be comforted. That part closed up, a fist tight with guilt.

  Her guilt was unquestionable (yes, she was on a first-name basis with those yipping hyenas). For example, Mike had loved golf. But it was an expensive hobby, and he didn’t want to leave the family for hours on a Saturday. Watching TV golf had been his way to keep up with his passion and still be a good father. But so many times over the years she’d scolded him for it. Why? Why hadn’t she let him just enjoy it? Because she was wicked, unforgivable refuse. Clearly.

  Each night, Becky lay on her her huge, empty bed and let the hyenas go to town.

  She was sorely tempted to replace the king bed with a smaller mattress, one that didn’t seem to scream, “YOU SHOULDN’T BE IN HERE ALONE! HOW DARE YOU LIE HERE ALONE!” She wanted nothing larger than a twin, or a sleeping bag, or maybe a bassinet. But she wouldn’t risk alarming the kids. So she stacked pillows on Mike’s side, enough to push against her while she slept, leaving her a narrow strip, her arms and knees hangi
ng over into space.

  “I’m pathetic,” she muttered.

  She was not one easily crushed by the problems of life—Polly’s asthma, Mike’s layoff in 1994 and those eight months when they lived on savings and unemployment checks, Hyrum’s fight-you-every-step-of-the-way-ness, even Mike’s illness. She could always deal. We’re a family. I am Warrior Mother. Everything will work out.

  It was shocking to face herself de-shelled, the limp worm of a snail.

  The weeks that followed the funeral, when things (horribly, inexplicably) returned to normal, Becky nestled into numbness. She stopped taking sleeping pills, and the lack of rest turned her into a zombie. She pushed through each day. For the kids. Smiled and cooked and cleaned up. Took dinner to neighbors when someone had a new baby or the fl u. Put on a content face. She detected a quiet tug on her soul, and interpreted it as a reminder that if she sought divine help she could feel some peace. She refused it. The numb pain Mike’s death left behind was the most tangible part of him she still possessed, and she refused to let go.

  Later she supposed she’d been throwing a spiritual tantrum. I want to suffer! You can’t make me not suffer! You think you can comfort me? Ha! I will hold my breath until my soul turns blue—see if I don’t!

  When people inquired after her, it was easy to divert attention.

  “How’s my Becky today?” Melissa asked on their now biweekly lunch date. Her brown hair was long and straight, free of purple streaks, and she’d recently taken to wearing nonprescription cat-eye glasses as a fashion accessory.

  “Good. The kids are perking up even faster than I could’ve hoped. Sam’s—you know Sam. Can’t keep him down for long. And Hyrum,” she sighed with a little relief. “His cousins are teaching him to snowboard and that’s all he talks about. But he’s talking. Polly and Fiona are blessed with oodles of friends, lots of outlets to talk about the loss.”

  Melissa nodded. “That’s all great. But I didn’t hear how you were.”

  “I said ‘good.’ ”

  Melissa nodded again, chewing her stuffed grape leaves very slowly, her eyes suspicious.

  With the kids on the mend, the intimate family dinners fighting invisible monsters petered out, so Becky switched tactics and made sure the house was full of noise and energy. Almost every night for dinner, someone was there—the grandparents, one of her brother’s families, Uncle Ryan. She wanted surrogate fathers in the house. She wanted laughter and light.

  She worked tirelessly to keep that house running as if all was well, but there were things Mike had always taken care of that she just forgot. Like the garbage. A couple of weeks went by, and she noticed the cans around the house overflowing (mostly with used tissue), so she did manage to dump them in the garbage can outside. Garbage day was Monday. Each Tuesday the outside cans were empty again. She never dragged them from the driveway to the curb. She never even realized she was supposed to. But each Tuesday, they were empty and waiting for more tissue trash.

  On a cold, bright morning after a night completely devoid of sleep, she was lying on her bedroom floor trying to count her eyelashes when she heard a sound she couldn’t name—a bumpy, rolling sound, like someone dragging something across gravel. She peered through the blinds. It was her neighbor Charles, dragging her garbage cans out to the curb, as he must have been doing ever since Mike’s illness.

  Becky had to choke down her cereal that morning, her throat was stiff with unshed tears.

  In general, her ward members mobilized like an army of angels. People didn’t just ask that lame question “Is there something I can do? Just call if you need anything.” They didn’t ask—they did. Garbage cans for starters, but also shoveling walks each snowfall that winter, dinners kept coming for a month, and then after that once a month two men assigned by the bishop arrived at her front door with a toolbox and said, “If we wouldn’t be a bother, Sister Jack, we’d have a blast puttering around your house and seeing what we can patch up.” Other single women began to include her in their girls’ night out on Fridays; other fathers in the ward began taking her boys ice fishing or snowshoeing.

  But there were the sour moments too.

  Becky told Melissa over baba ghanoush, “Yesterday at church, a lady took me aside with the express purpose to tell me, ‘Don’t feel bad. When God closes a door, he opens a window.’ ”

  Melissa choked on some pita bread.

  “I kid you not. What the heck does that mean anyway? That I’m supposed to climb out a window now? Or is the window just to air out the house, which is stinking to high heaven, given the fact that the door has been shut indefinitely and NO ONE CAN GET OUT?!”

  “Okay,” Melissa said, fishing scrap paper and a pen from her purse, “I want name and address. Tonight I’m going to board up her doors.”

  To be fair, Becky wouldn’t have been comforted by any idiom that fits onto refrigerator magnets. If you want to see Becky seethe, just suggest that she take the lemons life has given her and make some lemonade.

  A nd there was Joann, a well-meaning neighbor.

  “I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  “You know, my husband left me when I was thirty-three and had four small children. Just be grateful that didn’t happen.”

  Becky stared. Only with superhuman restraint did she keep from asking, “You’re saying I should be grateful my husband died?”

  “Experts say that divorce is a harder trial to bear than the death of a spouse.” The woman nodded to herself. “Hard stuff. Hard times. Yep, hard, hard times. Well, sorry!”

  The worst thing about this exchange? Becky couldn’t call Mike to tell him about it. The ache of that reality was briefly too much to bear, so she e-mailed Felix, describing the exchange.

  Apparently, if only Celeste had died, you’d be better off.

  He responded:

  I couldn’t agree more. This Joann shows some sense, though I suspect she is a demon dressed in human skin. I’d like to shave her head next time I’m in town, though I know you won’t let me, so perhaps we could schedule one evening to park near her house and stare at it menacingly.

  The e-mail helped some, imagining Joann as a demon in human skin was distracting at the very least, but Becky still felt overturned by the comment. She reasoned that it didn’t matter whether or not that woman’s divorce had been harder than Becky’s loss—both were hard, and trying to weigh one against the other invalidated Becky’s pain. She knew that, in a tight, angry, buzzing sort of way. But she got to wondering: Would it have been worse if Mike had chosen to leave her rather than been forced out of life by that nasty, cell-sucking disease? Definitely not, because the kids would still have their father, no matter how much being betrayed and cast off would have stung Becky. But what if he’d been a lousy father? What if he hadn’t loved the kids, or been abusive, or had a thousand-dollar-a-day cocaine habit?

  Becky passed much of the evening imagining scenarios that would have been worse than death. It didn’t help any more than the swearing.

  And she woke up the next morning feeling the same as always, as if it were the antithesis of Christmas. The morning was tacky with hopelessness, nothing to look forward to, and no marvelous anticipation would ever exist again. Because Mike was gone.

  Months pulled by, and while the kids got stronger, Becky, so slowly she barely noticed, was plunging deeper and deeper. Mike’s side of the closet was full. She didn’t change the sheets on the bed, hoping to retain his smell. She still turned to him to say something funny and had to rediscover again that he wasn’t there. She was reminded of amputee victims reporting that they still felt sensation in the missing limb. She still felt Mike beside her. Some days it was an empty comfort. Some days it made her fl at-out angry. Once, she punched a wall. She bruised her knuckles and didn’t even leave a dent. How irritating is that?

  She was a pillar of salt. If she could just keep standing, pretending to be the same solid mother, everything would be fine. No on
e would know her truth.

  The real question was, that first year, why didn’t she just break? Later she reasoned that she must have been walking on the prayers of others, she must have been surrounded by angels. She certainly wasn’t trying to survive on her own. No, she’d get through each day, each moment, for the kids, but really, she’d crossed her spiritual fingers and hoped to self-destruct.

  She moved through her year of grace like an ant through a drop of honey, until those powers of perseverance pulled back and nudged her to stand on her own. It was on the one-year anniversary of Mike’s death. There she was, left to her own strength, and of course, she collapsed.

  It hit her like a piano falling ten stories. The best part of Becky, the most brilliant and confident part, was the mother part—and what kind of a mother can’t keep her children’s father alive? She felt the cracking as she made Sam his peanut butter and sliced grape sandwich.

  “You okay, Mom?” he asked.

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t think she could use real words.

  She clung to her fraying ends as she hunted down Hyrum’s shoes before he missed the bus.

  “Why’re you being weird?”

  “Mm,” she said.

  The moment the front door clicked closed and Becky was left alone, she lay facedown in the family room and imploded. She cried, letting eyes and nose run into the carpet fibers, too defeated to hunt a tissue, too broken to lift her hands.

  Pretty much everything all her life had come easily—friends, school, pregnancy, birth, all the crooks and crannies of motherhood, house keeping, even selling two screenplays and acting in a movie, things mundane and things extraordinary. She’d never really been challenged.

  Until now. She didn’t know how to go on, didn’t know how to be Becky anymore.

  How was a woman who’d been sawed in half expected to keep standing? How could she survive with half of her gone? Mike was yang to her yin in every aspect of her life—the kids, the house, her thoughts, her spirituality, her very being. There was no space within her that he didn’t share.