The Behavior of Love

by Virginia Reeves

  The gate catches in some crisp weeds. I enter the pool in the shallow end and slide toward Ed. The pool bottom is slick with wet leaves and mud, some patches of ice.

  Crouching by his feet, I lift the tarp and say his name. His head rises as if he’s waking from an afternoon nap, just catching a little sleep while he waited for me to arrive. He rolls over. “Laura.” He grins a gapped smile. He is missing teeth. “I was just about to call you.”

  “You’re in a wading pool, Ed. How would you have called me?” I want to ask where his teeth have gone, his beautiful smile. It’s all I want to know right now—not what he’s doing in this pool in his suit, or how long he’s had holes in the bottom of his shoes. I want to know where his teeth are.

  “Just resting, my love, taking a little break. Things have been busy.” He pats my knee. “Did I tell you Pen went home? Her folks finally agreed to take her out of the institution. It’s going to be so good for her to be out there in the community.”

  The grime on his hands is far beyond dirt.

  “You’ve been missing for ten days.”

  Ed scans his surroundings. “A quick rest, sweetheart. I was just getting up.”

  He struggles to rise, and I help him shuffle his body out from under the tarp, his left leg a dead thing, unwilling to lend support. We take the rising in stages, utilizing the edge of the pool to prop up his elbow, and then his hips, where we stay for several minutes. I massage the muscles of his leg as the physical therapist showed me back at the hospital in Great Falls. Ed’s leg juts out thick and straight, rigid as a pole.

  “He’s going to seem like his old self sometimes, and then like a complete stranger,” I hear his neurologist say. “His memory will come and go. It’ll seem like he’s retained everything, and then it’s going to seem like he’s retained nothing. You’ll have to be patient. It’s going to take some time to figure out who this new Edmund is.”

  I hear Benjy asking, “My dad’s a new person?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “And you’ll get to know him all over again.”

  I rub Ed’s calf, and he lets out a little moan of pleasure.

  “That feels nice.” His voice is low and seductive, a dirty old man’s.

  I slap his knee. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  He guffaws. Such an endearing scoundrel, a delightful bastard. Even now he is charming.

  “You’ve been missing awhile, Ed. We have the police involved. There are signs up around town.” He looks over my head, his eyes on something far away. I notice the sweater under his suit coat, the hat on his head, the scarf around his neck. Someone has been taking care of him, at least. He scratches his beard, the hairs full of food and dirt, bits of leaves and lint. His clothes are filthy, his pants soiled in the front and back from bladder and bowels. He’s lost weight. The skin of his face hangs off the bones. “Ed, you’ve been gone for ten days.”

  Confusion overtakes him. His eyes blink too rapidly. His hand starts to pull and tug at the fabric of his dirty pants, a regular gesture in this new Ed. I can see his mind working, trying to find a reasonable explanation for his current condition. There was a dog. There was a robbery, very small. There was a flat tire and a Good Samaritan. He is searching, and it is devastating to watch. He is a man running down a hall banging on doors, begging for help. But the doors remain closed to him. Locked.

  “It’s all right. Let’s just get you home.” I stand and help him to his feet. “That leg okay? Put some weight on it. Good. Is that your cane over there?” I point to the cane and he nods. “Can you stand here while I go get it?” Another nod, and I am suddenly afraid that he has lost all his language, that he will never speak again. What were his last words? I want to remember.

  I was just getting up.

  I was just about to call you.

  That feels nice.

  I grab the cane and tuck it into his left hand, the fingers curling around the handle on instinct, a baby’s grip on a finger. “That’ll help things. There’s Beau, you see? Your dog. I’m going to have you sit with him on that bench over there while I run up and get the car, all right?” He nods, mute, and we take tiny steps to the shallow end, shuffling through the leaves and ice, delicate and careful. I talk to fill his expansive silence. “Easy does it. That’s right. Here we are at the edge. It’s going to be a big step up, okay? Can you brace your cane on the outside here and pull? That’s the way. Good work, Ed. Here we are.” A string of words, unreeling. I am talking to my boys as they learn to walk, or eat, or tie their shoes. Just like that, love. Good job. An endless line of positive reinforcement.

  We shuffle to the gate and then out. A man appears while I’m untying Beau. I don’t know where he’s come from, where he was. He is tall and young, dirty and heavily bearded and oddly tan for this time of year, these short days with so little sun.

  “You out of here, Ed?” His smile is wide and full and white.

  “Have you been with him?” I ask.

  “Sure have.” The man gently punches Ed’s shoulder. “Hell of a guy.”

  “What has he been doing?”

  “Same thing as any of us—living. Ain’t that right, Ed?” Ed smiles. “This your old lady? Penelope?” The man sticks his hand out, and I shake it without thinking. “Sang your praises the whole time he was here.” He drops my hand and shakes Ed’s. “You come on back anytime.”

  Penelope.

  It is disgusting to be jealous, but I am.

  I settle Ed on the bench and call Beau. The dog is reluctant, scared, but I coax him close and set one of Ed’s hands on his head. “You remember Beau, right? You got him for me as a puppy.” Ed’s fingers awaken in Beau’s thick fur, the dirty nails scratching deep. They reach for Beau’s ears next, and Beau’s back leg starts kicking, and Ed laughs again, rich and loud.

  “Hah! Habituated response! Can’t help yourself, can you, boy?”

  He can talk! It is all I can do to keep from wrapping my arms around him in celebration.

  “All right, Ed. I’m going to leave you here with Beau for a minute while I go get the car, all right? I walked down.”

  He smiles his new smile at me. “Take your time, love. It’s a beautiful day.” He turns back to Beau, scratching harder. “Isn’t that right, boy?”

  “Why did you tell that man Penelope is your wife?” I ask before I know I’m asking, and I regret it immediately, such a selfish, damning question.

  “Love of my life,” he says. He lifts his filthy hand from Beau’s head and holds it against my face. “You’re the love of my life, Laura.”

  “What about Pen?”

  “Sweet girl,” he says, patting my cheek. “You’ve done so well for yourself. I told you it was right to leave Boulder.”

  He is nodding to an unvoiced question, eyes glazy. I take his hand from my face and set it on Beau’s head again. “Right back,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  I run home, winded and panting when I arrive. I should check in with Benjy, tell him we’ve found his dad. I should call Tim, who has Charlie with him at the office, call Pete and Bonnie, rally the troops, get everyone here, stage an intervention. It’s time, Ed. This has gone too far. We probably wouldn’t even discuss it. We’d probably just take him to a facility, check him in, sign him over. Goodbye, Ed.

  I go in the side door of the garage, take my spare keys off the hook, open the garage door, back away. I tell myself Benjy is absorbed in his television show. He won’t hear the noise of my return and immediate departure. I will be right back. He is fine.

  Ed is exactly where I left him, his eyes lighting when I come into view. “Laura!” he says again. “I was just about to call you!”

  “Beat you to it. Come on. I have the car.” I untie Beau, then help Ed up, holding on to his right arm at the elbow.

  I load Beau into the backseat, where he stabs his nose against the far window, begging for it to open. He loves car rides, his head outside, those long ears flapping. Give me a minute, boy.

  Getting E
d into the car is as difficult as getting him to stand in the pool, and I can feel the frustration rising in him as we negotiate his simultaneous climb and fall. I have to push his left leg over to make room for his right. The depth of his odor comes clear in the confines of the car, even with the door open, and I breathe through my mouth to subdue it—vomit and shit and piss and a deep, deep rot. He smells like death, the decomposing body of a run-over cat, the disintegrating remains of a mouse in a trap.

  He pats his shirt pocket for his smokes and brings out an empty package.

  “We can stop at the B and B,” I tell him, closing the door, coming to the driver’s side. “Anything else you need?”

  Ed pulls one of his note sheets from the same pocket, still there after these ten days, after all the dirt and mess. I lean over and read: “Radio transistor, television, speaker wires, lead soldiers.” On another square, there’s a whole paragraph of words I can’t decipher, but Ed is already laughing at them, saying, “I remember this one, so good. Listen to this joke: A man kills a deer and takes it home to cook for dinner. He and his wife decide they won’t tell the kids what kind of meat it is but will give them a clue and let them guess. The dad says, ‘Well, it’s what Mommy calls me sometimes.’ The little girl screams to her brother, ‘Don’t eat it. It’s asshole!’ ” Ed slaps his leg and laughs and laughs, so thrilled.

  It’s a good joke. I give him a smile, a small chuckle. I reach back to roll down Beau’s window, then across Ed to roll down his, and then mine. I can’t reach the one in the back on the passenger side. The day is bright and fresh. But Ed’s scent remains strong, even with the airflow. I am breathing through my mouth, and he is unaware. I drive us to the B&B, a tiny place that sells malt liquor and cheap beer and cigarettes. They keep some boxed and canned food on the shelves, a few dairy products and cheap loaves of bread. I leave Ed staring up the street, at a boy on a bicycle, a truck passing, country-western music on the radio.

  I hurry in and out of the store and light us each a cigarette when I return. Ed rests his head against the seat, tapping his fingers on his leg in time to a song I can’t hear. He smiles. “Recite me a poem.”

  “I don’t know any poems, Ed.”

  “Come on, now, Pen. I know you have a whole pack of them memorized.”

  I close my eyes, open them, shift into gear. “I’m not Pen.”

  I pull onto the street, signal left, toward the home I share with Tim. There it is on the right, one of my sons inside, my other son with his father on the other end of a phone call I should make.

  I drive right past and point the car toward the highway, unsure of our destination until I hit the double lanes. Wind gusts through the car, whips my hair over my head. In the side mirror, I see Beau’s sleek head out the window, tongue lolling, ears fluttering. My dog, a gift from Ed when I least needed it. I can’t imagine our lives without this animal, curled at the foot of Benjy’s bed every night, sitting by the door when he leaves for school.

  “Adventure!” Ed shouts. “You and me and the open road.”

  The gorgeous Montana sky is blue above us, and winter is white on the mountains. We pass Montana City, enter the canyon, twist around curves. I look at the cliffs and trees, the boulders crouching in their grasses, a herd of deer flicking their enormous ears. Ed lights another cigarette and passes it to me, then lights another for himself. I ash outside, the smoke at home in my lungs.

  “I always loved this drive,” Ed says.

  “Me, too.”

  I see us driving those first few times I taught at the institution, both of us so much younger. I remember the feeling of Benjy in my stomach, still a secret. I hear Ed’s voice fill the car, rattling on and on about his patients, his staff, his lack of funding, his asshole of a director. I feel myself fading without his notice.

  My hands are solid on the steering wheel now, and Ed is quiet, reflective, his eyes exploring the landscape. His cigarette goes to his mouth, then to the window, then back to his mouth. Habit. Routine.

  The sun stretches wide over the Boulder Valley when we crest the hill.

  I thought I was taking us to the institution, but I stop instead on Boulder’s one main street, cozying up to the curb in front of the Tavern. “How about I buy you a drink?”

  “My lucky day!”

  I roll the windows up to cracks and tell Beau to stay. “We’ll be right back, buddy.”

  I am banking on a friendly bartender, an old pal, and there he is, bellowing Ed’s name the second we walk inside. “Malinowski! It’s been too long, my man!”

  “Toby,” Ed says, and I am amazed that he finds this man’s name so readily. He puts his hand on my lower back, proprietary, and shepherds me to the bar. “Meet my bride.”

  “Ah, the famous Laura. Only good things,” Toby promises.

  I am Laura again, my Penelope self tucked away.

  Ed orders two shots of Jameson, two beers, and I excuse myself to the restroom, drawing level with Toby down the bar. Ed’s attention is on the pool table.

  “Any chance you have a lost-and-found I could raid?” I ask.

  The man laughs, unfazed. I can only imagine all he’s seen. “Closet past the women’s toilet. Help yourself. He okay?”

  “No.”

  Toby nods. He already knew that.

  I find an enormous red tracksuit, white and navy stripes down its legs and arms, inexplicable. I find an XL T-shirt advertising Glacier National Park. A giant mountain goat peers off a rocky cliff below the park’s name. Ed will have to make do with his holey shoes and dirty socks. No underwear.

  “Come with me,” I whisper in his ear when I return. There’s beer in his mustache, a third of the pint already gone. He hasn’t touched the shot, though; as with that half a Reuben sandwich, he’s saving it for me.

  “My pleasure,” he says.

  The Tavern is sparsely populated, only a few people here and there taking in an afternoon of drinking. No one looks at us as we make our way to the men’s bathroom. No one cares what might be happening, what circumstances have driven this fine-dressed woman into this bar with this slovenly, crippled man. Who are they to judge?

  I lock us inside.

  “Whoa, there.”

  “Nothing like that, Ed. We’re just going to clean you up a bit.”

  Ed looks down, and I see him recognize the state of his dress for the first time. “Oh,” he says. “Damn it.” I am unwrapping the scarf, removing his suit coat, pulling the sweater over his head. “I was tracking down a patient, my damn orderlies so few and far between and mostly morons, you know.” I am helping him balance as he steps out of his filthy pants. “I had to walk through the goddamned mud along the river for miles, hollering for George, that poor boy. You remember George, don’t you? He had that chair over his head.”

  He stands naked before me, and I pull paper towels from the dispenser, wet them in the sink, run them over his body.

  “We’re still so understaffed,” he says.

  “I know, love.”

  I pat him dry with new towels and start to dress him—Glacier shirt over his head, tracksuit jacket, pants pulled up his legs one at a time as he balances against the sink. I slide his dirty shoes back onto his dirty feet, his long and craggy toenails. I wet his hair and flatten it down, straighten out his beard.

  “There,” I say, turning him to the mirror. “Good as new.”

  “Hah!”

  “Let’s go drink.”

  I stuff Ed’s suit and all the other soiled pieces in the garbage. Toby smiles at us as we emerge. A fellow at the bar winks. I imagine his imaginings. A quickie in the men’s room between whom—a woman and her husband? A prostitute and her customer?

  I raise my shot of whiskey, knock it against Ed’s.

  “To you,” he says.

  “And you.”

  We drink and then chase the burn with beer. The people at the pool table pay their tab and leave, and Ed challenges me to a game. “Remember when we played back in Michigan? You were so good
.”

  I haven’t played pool since then. We married so quickly—only six months after we met—and we lived for each other, deeply, furiously embedded. I remember Ed’s voice commanding the bar, all his grad-school friends, all the jealous women, everyone enthralled with my husband. He was mine—I’d won him, a prize.

  Ed lets me break, and I sink the two and six, which I call luck, but then the three and four, too—talent. I forgot that I used to be good at this.

  “Give a man a chance!” Ed bellows.

  I miss, and Ed takes over. Even with the limp and stitch of his new diminished body, he twists himself into position, pocketing the nine, twelve, and thirteen. A near-miss on the ten.

  I order us another round. “What are we playing for?” I eye the cue ball, calculate the necessary angle to set the seven into the far corner. We played for blow jobs in the past, public nudity, pantsless car rides, Sundays without clothes, Chinese food, burgers, a trip to the drive-in, not answering the phone. I lived a whole life with this man.

  “The tab,” he says. “Loser buys drinks.”

  He wears lost clothes. He doesn’t have a wallet.

  “Deal.”

  The seven hits wide, and I can’t get the five in, no matter how hard I try. Ed sinks his stripes, one after another, smooth as he’s always been, masterful. He leaves the cue ball perfectly positioned in front of the eight after dropping the fourteen, an effortless finish.

  “Damn it,” I say, genuinely disappointed. I could’ve won.

  But this version of Edmund Malinowski has no money, and I was destined to lose.

  I pay our bar tab, and we walk to the car. Beau stands up in the backseat, his tail thumping, eager to see his people.

  I still haven’t called home.

  “I need to make a quick phone call, all right? Give me just a minute.”

  Ed is lighting another cigarette. “Take your time,” he says again, like he did outside the B&B, calm and content. I have all the time in the world.

  Toby gladly lets me use the bar phone. “Any friend of Ed’s . . .”