Magda and Eleanor stare at Kaye without saying anything. Magda puts down the tortilla chip that was heading for her mouth and says, “You could always pretend that you are part of someone else’s family.”
“Anybody else’s,” Eleanor says. Then they sit there for a moment, relishing their unhappiness, almost seeking comfort in it.
6
KAYE EMERGES FROM her house in the dim light and opens the passenger door to Eleanor’s car. “Just drive,” she says.
Kaye doesn’t explain, and Eleanor knows not to ask. The teenage boys in the next yard look up at the sound of the car door shutting. They are tall and lean young men, pushing each other on the neighbor’s front lawn, boys who three years ago refused to interact with Eugene in middle school. Eleanor is sure they would not recognize her or her car because these aren’t things that teenage boys pay attention to, so her disapproval of them means nothing.
Eleanor has left Frank at home watching the NBA finals, while her sons sit in front of their computers. She and Kaye are meeting Phil Anderson at a music club near the university, where his daughter is entered in a band contest. The phone call surprised Eleanor. “What are you and Frank doing tonight?” Phil had said. “I’m coming into town.”
Eleanor made sure that Frank would be busy before she invited Kaye. The invitation did not seem for a couple. “An old friend from high school. But the playoffs are tonight, aren’t they?” It hadn’t been difficult.
They drive toward the quaint downtown. Kaye assumes a directing role, even though it isn’t her gig, and Eleanor thinks to herself that she doesn’t need this behavior. They turn on to a residential street that runs into the lakeshore to the east, and pass the YMCA building, tall, lit up, taking up an entire block. Along the tree-lined street that runs under the el tracks, they park, and Eleanor feeds the meter with all the quarters they have. They walk under the bridge and around the corner to the club.
Kaye is muttering and Eleanor isn’t paying attention. She can feel the blood pumping in her neck. They pick a table outside on the front sidewalk patio of the club and wait for a waitress. Kaye says that she is thirsty; Eleanor has a dry mouth. There is a line of college-aged kids at the front door of the club, just beyond their table.
After twenty minutes of quietly sipping beer, Eleanor notes that Kaye is in a better mood. “Is that him? The aging Nordic god walking our way?” Kaye says.
To Eleanor, the comment isn’t a compliment. Phil is tall and well built, and his blond hair is spiked in a hairstyle that, to Eleanor, seems too youthful. Yet, she is impressed that he has cleaned up to meet her. He wears a black leather jacket, though it is really too warm for it. He grins as he arrives at their table, and Kaye and Eleanor stand. While Eleanor considers whether to shake his hand, he grabs her arm and abruptly kisses her cheek. The action is so swift and jarring that her face goes hot, and for a moment she thinks she has stopped breathing. She introduces Phil to Kaye, who stares blankly at him before taking his hand. Eleanor interprets this as Kaye’s way of saying, “Is this it?” and she feels exposed.
They show their driver’s licenses to the bouncer, who must be twenty-one but doesn’t look it. He is the size of a football player, and gives them each a wristband that, as Kaye remarks, does little to hide the fact that they are old enough to be everyone else’s parents. Phil pays for the three of them before Eleanor can reach into her pocket for her cash.
Inside the club, the room is hot, loud, and dark, and smells of spilled beer, Mr. Clean, and sweat. She can feel perspiration gather at the back of her neck and under her hair, but she sees that, as Phil looks at the mass of moving people, he doesn’t remove his leather jacket.
Eleanor feels as if she is in a mosh pit, though it is difficult to remember what that was like. All around them, white undergraduates sway, wave, and call out to the band on the small stage in the front of the room. The boys wear faded baseball caps worn backwards and molded to their heads, the girls are in tight jeans and ballet flats.
Phil smiles at Kaye and Eleanor, and points with his head. “She’s in the crowd,” he says.
“Who?” Eleanor assumes he is talking about his daughter.
“My almost-ex.”
Kaye leans toward Eleanor’s ear. “Who?”
“His daughter’s mother,” Eleanor says. “His wife.”
The current band finishes and they can now hear each other talk. Eleanor asks Phil to point out his wife, Linda. He does so. She is with another, older woman, at the opposite side of the crowded room. Phil tells her that the older woman is Linda’s mother. Linda Anderson is taller than Eleanor had expected, blonde and thin. She doesn’t seem aware that Phil is in the room, or that Eleanor and Kaye are watching her.
The next band sets up and Eleanor recognizes Jilly, Phil’s older daughter, from a YouTube video of a pop song cover. She bends over to adjust a microphone stand and her blonde roller curls fall over her face and shoulders.
Jilly wears prim shoes, the kind of pumps she might have borrowed from her grandmother. She doesn’t fit in with the saggy-pants boys around her who are setting up the drum kit and adjusting the amplifiers. Phil leans down to Eleanor and explains that his daughter’s music is “folkie.” The type you might wear old lady shoes to listen to, Eleanor thinks. “This doesn’t feel like her crowd,” Phil says.
Jilly plays for about twenty minutes, and no one in the audience seems to be paying attention, except for Eleanor, Phil, and Kaye, as well as the almost-ex and her mother. They watch Jilly’s lips move, they hear the bass and drums, but Eleanor has trouble hearing Jilly. Her voice is soft and, as she sways and flips her hair, the ruckus around her drowns it out. Phil’s face is sunken. When she finishes playing, he says that he needs to help Jilly take down and disappears. He will meet Eleanor and Kaye outside.
In the artificial yellow light on the sidewalk of the club, Kaye looks sour. “That was painful,” she says to Eleanor. “What do we do now?”
What are they supposed to do now, go home? Eleanor digs in her heels and turns her head to look for Phil’s wife and mother-in-law. They are both standing nearby. Even in the dim light, Eleanor can see that Linda is not a natural blonde, and that her clothes hang on her thin body. She puts out her hand to Linda. “I’m Eleanor,” she says. “I went to high school with Phil. I live around here.”
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Linda.” Near her, Eleanor feels short and sloppy. She looks to the mother-in-law, but Linda doesn’t offer up her name.
“We enjoyed hearing your daughter sing,” Eleanor says. She can feel the tension in the air like the humidity, thick and unforgiving.
“Thank you,” Linda says. She plays with a strand of her hair, curling it around her fingers in a childish act that doesn’t match the sternness of her voice. “Where is it you live?”
Eleanor points behind her. “That way.”
“Away from the lake? I like the beach.”
Eleanor nods.
Phil finally emerges from the club, pausing outside the door before clapping his hands together and looking in the direction of Linda and Eleanor. “Have you all met yet?” he asks them. It’s Kaye who answers, “Yes,” abruptly so that they don’t have to go through introductions again. Phil looks at Eleanor then Kaye, then back to Eleanor again. “Then let’s eat!” He is ebullient.
They follow Phil into the bar and grill next door to the club. As they enter, the waiter says that they are closing the restaurant, so only the bar menu is available. This doesn’t faze Phil, but Eleanor is not sure if she and Kaye should stay. Kaye looks hungry, rolling her eyes as the waiter makes his announcement. She is always hungry, and perhaps feeding her is better than taking her home. “I need another drink,” Kaye says.
They are led through the dark, half-full bar to a table, and as they walk in the dim light, Eleanor can see the boy Phil once was beneath his windburned cheeks and whitening blond hair. She thinks that it is thoughtful of him to help his mother-in-law to her chair. The mother-in-law sits silent
ly and watches Eleanor and Kaye.
Eleanor feels the urge to say, “So, here we are,” but doesn’t. Then Phil and his wife exchange mutterings about the journey to town. The waiter takes drink orders and is mercifully fast in delivering them. Linda turns her wine at the base of the glass with thin manicured fingers. The nails, varnished in a natural pink, shine as if the paint is new. She doesn’t pick up the glass. Eleanor sips her own beer. Kaye downs half of her Blue Moon and sucks on the orange rind. Phil smiles as if he is not aware of the strangeness. His mood invigorates Eleanor. It’s positive.
Kaye takes the orange rind out of her mouth. “So how long has your daughter been singing?”
The almost-ex defers to Phil in an obviously well-rehearsed act, by turning her chin and looking up at him under her domed eyelids. Phil shrugs uncomfortably. “Piano lessons, maybe in first grade? She sang at church and at school. I don’t know. She put a band together senior year of high school?”
Linda nods. He’s passed her test, Eleanor thinks, and wonders if now they will act like a couple.
“Very talented,” Kaye says of Phil’s daughter.
Eleanor plays with the tiny diamond pendant around her neck. Linda watches her. “Nice necklace,” she says.
“Present from my husband,” Eleanor says. Eleanor doesn’t want Linda to think that she is chasing Phil. She also wants to understand what sort of uncomfortable game Phil and Linda are playing.
There is no way to leave now that they have ordered food.
Kaye spreads her lips suspiciously and starts on her next Blue Moon. The food arrives. Phil looks at the avocado half on top of Kaye’s salad, and as though he were marking his territory, he smiles coyly, “I love avocados.” He winks at Eleanor, and Kaye takes him seriously, picking up the avocado with her fingertips and dropping it in the middle of Phil’s plate. “I hate them,” Kaye says. Linda raises her eyebrows. Does she think he is flirting with her? Eleanor wonders. Is he?
Linda turns her glass and smiles periodically. She pokes at her food with a fork. Eleanor suspects that Linda thinks Kaye is funny—everyone does—but isn’t letting on. Linda arranges her food into four neat piles on her plate, which must be, Eleanor thinks, the secret to her narrow figure. She notices that Linda does not bite, chew or swallow, she just plays with her food, and she recalls how Phil has said what an excellent cook Linda is.
Linda turns to Kaye, “What do you do?”
Kaye raises her head from her beer, not expecting the question. She smiles. “I’m a police detective.”
Eleanor looks at Kaye, but Kaye doesn’t look back. Then Eleanor feels Kaye’s foot on top of hers, pressing down until Eleanor is forced to gasp because it hurts. Kaye is wearing cowboy boots and the heel is hard on Eleanor’s sandaled instep. She closes her watering eyes.
The almost-ex raises her eyebrows and tosses her blonde hair. It’s the hair Eleanor dreamed of having in high school, long and straight. “That’s an interesting profession,” Linda says. “What do you do as a detective?”
Kaye smiles slyly. Eleanor turns her body so that her feet are not near Kaye’s. “Drugs, gambling. Vice.”
Eleanor realizes that she is holding tightly onto her glass.
“We just broke up an illegal poker club. Something called Cobra’s in the South Loop,” Kaye says.
Linda seems interested. She nods and smiles and looks genuine, to Eleanor. Phil appears not to know how to enter the conversation. All of this encourages Kaye to keep going. “They didn’t see it coming.”
Eleanor considers all of the reality crime shows Kaye watches when she is at home, bored, waiting for her daughter to return with the car, or her husband to emerge from the garage, and she wishes Kaye would take up a hobby, like knitting. Then Phil smiles at Eleanor, and she sees there is nothing she can do. He is enjoying himself, or he is acting as if he is. She wants him to enjoy himself, to enjoy having met her, even if the situation is deadly uncomfortable. Eleanor had imagined she’d have some time to catch up with Phil, the three of them, her, and Kaye, and Phil, at a small table drinking wine and laughing. Kaye would be there to make sure it was all legit. And Phil might send Eleanor a signal that he is interested in her and give her the chance to step out of her boring life, to play with fire. But that scenario is clearly not happening.
“Flak jackets, big guns, battering ram. The whole nine yards,” Kaye says. “We took in ten people.”
“No kidding,” Linda says. She takes a sip from her wine glass. “You broke down the door?”
Linda is getting comfortable. She is drinking. Clearly, she and Kaye watch the same shows.
“Actually, with all of that equipment, the uniforms rang the doorbell and a guy answered.”
Uniforms?
“Was the club hidden?” the almost-ex asks.
“Storefront. Not hidden at all.”
This is Kaye’s way of making it seem real.
“They didn’t post a neon sign saying they were gambling illegally, if that’s what you mean,” Kaye says.
Then, Phil asks, “How long have you been doing this, Kaye?”
Does he suspect?
Kaye shrugs and drinks. “About fifteen years.” Then she excuses herself, smiling, and on the way to the ladies’ she stops the waiter and orders another beer.
Eleanor looks at Phil and says that she will be right back. In the twenty steps to the toilet, she struggles to understand why Phil and Linda are playing along, or if they could even believe Kaye’s story. Maybe it’s because they are unfamiliar with Kaye and they know no police officers. Eleanor is furious. Kaye has upstaged her big meeting with Phil. The ladies’ room door slams behind her, and the words, “I can’t believe you are lying like this!” come rushing out of her mouth. A young mother with a toddler looks at her with wide, open eyes and shields her son as they exit. “He’s up rather late,” Eleanor says, hoping that they have heard.
“I’m taking a piss in here,” Kaye says from behind the toilet stall door.
Eleanor stands in front of Kaye’s stall and realizes that this entire evening is a disaster. She wants someone to blame, but there is no specific event that points her toward that person, just one element after another. Kaye is Kaye and she has had too much to drink. Phil is Phil—perhaps not wanting to exclude anyone, even the wife he is divorcing. After all, they are here for their daughter, though that was not made clear to Eleanor in the invitation. Thank goodness she had the presence of mind to bring her own chaperone (there was never any question in her mind of bringing Frank). All of this leaves Eleanor feeling like the uncomfortable interloper. She will have to revisit this whole thing.
Kaye is going to ignore Eleanor’s complaints, so Eleanor leaves the ladies’ room and returns to the table. Eventually, Kaye follows.
Eleanor is now ready to leave, and there is an ache inside of her as she waits anxiously to announce that she and Kaye must go. Then the waiter brings Linda another glass of wine. Eleanor wonders what happened to the first one.
“Camping in the desert—” Phil begins and Linda finishes, “—Is no place for ladies? Is that what you wanted to say?” she asks Phil. Eleanor has missed a part of the conversation. Please tell me Kaye didn’t also say that she was in the military, Eleanor thinks. Then, “It was the first Gulf War. I don’t really remember details,” Phil says. But how could you forget that? Eleanor wonders. It must be that he doesn’t want to talk about something his wife brought up.
Kaye pulls out her iPhone as she finishes her beer. The evening is done. Eleanor can finally say that they need to go.
FRANK IS ASLEEP when Eleanor comes home. He has left his bedside lamp on so that she can see her way through to the bed.
Eleanor can see this from the top of the stairs and the hallway. In his own room, Eugene sits on his bed with a handheld game console and the bedroom door wide open. He looks up and waves to his mother. Liam’s door is closed, and from the crack beneath it, Eleanor sees that his light is off.
Frank is on top of th
e bedcover with his pajamas on, still wearing his eyeglasses. The television is on with the volume low, and periodically he sputters a gasping snore. Eleanor remembers that once she found this charming. She removes his glasses and sets them on the pile of books on his bedside table. She turns off the television and the lamp and waits for her eyes to adjust to the dark. When she finally crawls into bed, she finds that Frank’s skin is warm and damp. In his unconsciousness he shakes her off and then turns on his side, away from her.
She rolls to the other side of the bed. She looks up at the ceiling and the shadows cast by the fan. The birds are gone now. It’s too late for them. She is energized by the evening, disappointed, wondering if she should try to see Phil again or just drop it. Did she make a mistake in staying to go to the restaurant? Was the point of the invitation really just to hear his daughter, or was it to see Phil? Did she get all of this wrong? Then, again, the wife and her mother arrived separately.
She picks up her phone and there is a brief text from Phil. “I’m sorry about tonight. Didn’t expect my wife and her mother. They weren’t planning to come. Enjoyed meeting your friend. Hope you aren’t upset.”
She starts to type. It can’t hurt, she thinks. “The birds are quiet now,” she writes. “It was an interesting evening. I hope you got home ok.”
It’s all she can think of to say to him as her brain flutters with information and she tries to get to sleep.
7
PHIL LEAVES THE restaurant and watches Eleanor and Kaye walk under the el tracks. A fog is settling, the streets are wet, and he can hear their heels click on the pavement. Their voices fade with the growing distance, through the increasingly dense air and the crevices between buildings. A train passes over the bridge. Phil feels the ground vibrate, and the sky around him lights up in a flash. Then it is gone and the air is quiet. He is startled at the longing he has as he watches Eleanor go. The whole thing was his idea, and he knew that he could have met her and felt nothing. It is all up to chemistry. He knows that. And then his almost-ex decided to appear with her mother. Everyone had seemed to act on their best behavior. And, he had explained to Linda that this was just a meeting, a renewing of an old friendship. He waits until he can no longer see Eleanor’s body fade ahead of him, along with her friend’s.
We Have Everything Before Us Page 4