by Sue Miller
As she reaches into the dining room to turn off the light on her way upstairs, Lottie suddenly thinks of a passage she read a long time ago in Anna Karenina, a passage about how arbitrary our decisions about marriage, about whom we should love, are. It connects to all this, somehow, to everything she’s been thinking about. She squats by the stacks of books on the floor and finds Anna Karenina. She flips through the pages until she comes upon it.
But it isn’t quite what she was thinking of. It isn’t apt. It describes a moment when two minor characters have gone for a walk to collect mushrooms. She is sure he will propose; and he has decided that he will, today. And there comes a moment as they move toward each other when it seems this will happen. But it doesn’t. And then, because it doesn’t at this moment, it becomes clear to both of them that it never will.
Puzzled, Lottie puts the book down. She turns off the light and goes upstairs. She’s wet, and cold. Her bedroom window is open, and a raw breeze is blowing in. She shuts it and peels off her clothes. Water has beaded on the floor in front of the window. She wipes it with a T-shirt, puts on her robe, and goes down the hall to the bathroom.
She lets the hot water pelt her back, not even soaping herself. She turns and feels it beat against her breasts – the sensitive, radiated flesh – against her belly. She looks down. Her wet pubic hair is pulled to a point between her legs by the water, like the point of an old-fashioned valentine heart. The water makes a jittery dotted line down from it. She leans her head back, shuts her eyes, and lets the water strike her face, puddle in her open mouth.
Then she moans aloud suddenly, opens her eyes. She’s remembered: she first thought of the passage from Tolstoy not when she was pondering the mysteries of decisions and feelings in marriage, in love; but earlier, when Lawrence – Larry – kissed her. When she, or he, or the moment itself, decided that they wouldn’t sleep together. They wouldn’t ball each other. Thinking of the difference between that trashy scene and the beautiful, sad passage in Tolstoy, Lottie twists her head back and forth sharply. Then she reaches down and pushes the stiff knob above the faucet. The shower stops; after a second the water courses out of the faucet. And Lottie stands there wet and shivering, watching the thick silver ribbon of water divide and splash over the tops of her feet.
CHAPTER X
The next morning is dry and hot, and Lottie sleeps late, not wanting to wake into the memory that waits behind her dreams. She’s sweaty and tangled in the sheet when she does open her eyes, and she lies for a moment staring at the ceiling. Though the window is closed, she can hear children yelling in the street. A window somewhere slams shut. And already Lottie is going quite carefully over the evening before, calling up each element of her own participation in it, remembering the real excitement she felt, playing her shabby game with Larry. She conjures an image of Jack – his lined, gentle face – to shame herself more, to increase her own guilt; and then feels this, abruptly, as the shabbiest behavior of all. She cries out, and unwinds herself from the sheet. Her problems, even her self-disgust, are purest self-indulgence, she thinks. After all, Jessica is dead, Cameron is mourning.
She’s naked; she dresses quickly. In the bathroom mirror, her hair is crazed – flattened, a tangled wild wedge shape. She smiles at her own ugly reflection. ‘Just so,’ she says. She brushes her hair, rubs it with a wet washcloth to restore its even curliness. She brushes her teeth and is suddenly aware that her tooth is sore, it aches slightly.
The house is still as she moves through it. Outside, the cicadas whir. No breeze. Lottie is sweating as she stands in the kitchen and waits for the water to boil. She turns on the radio, but then turns it off quickly. Churchy music, holy-sounding sopranos.
She didn’t look out her bedroom window upstairs; she hasn’t gone to the front of the house down here; and so it isn’t until she steps off the porch to retrieve the paper from where it lies on the walk that she notices that Cameron’s car is gone. She stops, and then she walks down to the curbside with her hands on her hips. She looks stupidly up and down the street – as though she might be mistaken about where she parked it, as though it might have moved on its own in the night and she might discover it in some other spot. Her pulse has quickened. She takes the steps two at a time on her way back into the house. Her bare feet thud. She is angry, a reasonless, pulsing rage. Cameron came for the car! He came for it without bothering to get in touch with her, and she is pissed off at him. She imagines his impassive face, his self-containment. Her hands fumble with the phone; she makes a mistake. ‘Fucking rotary dial,’ she says, starting over. That he didn’t leave a note! That he didn’t call her!
She gets through. The telephone rings, and then goes on ringing, in his apartment. She imagines its empty beauty and order, the phone ringing and ringing in the open space, and she is more angry by the second.
And then she realizes: the machine is off. The answering machine. The bastard came home and turned off the machine. She slams the phone down and stands in the dining room for perhaps a full minute. She has begun to talk to herself. ‘Okay, then. It was definitely Cam. He was here. Maybe he did leave a note. Say he did. Where? Where would he put it?’
She spends some time looking on the few surfaces left on the first floor, mostly in the kitchen and among the papers on her worktable. Of course there’s no note. She drains her cup and sprints upstairs. She puts on shoes, gets her purse, then comes back down and leaves the house.
For the second day in a row, she drives through the morning air to the South End. Today she barely notices anything. That consciousness of detail which descended on her yesterday – perhaps because she was so full of the thought of Jessica’s death? – is gone. She’s aware only of anger, and under it, the possibility of something gone wrong. She feels as she did the first few times Ryan was very late for a curfew, a rage intensified by the helpless edge of worry. She prefers the rage, she dwells in it and pushes the worry under. Blindly, unintentionally, she cuts someone off on Storrow Drive. He pulls in behind her, then careens into the passing lane, cuts her off in return. Lottie brakes, slows down. She drives more carefully along the sparkling river and then across Back Bay. A post-breakfast crowd is milling around in the courtyard of the homeless shelter on Cam’s block, and Lottie has to creep by them where they spill obliviously out into the street. One of them turns and socks her car as she brushes past him. Lottie can’t be bothered protesting. She drives to the end of the block and parks. She doesn’t see Cameron’s car on the side street where he usually leaves it, or in front of his building. She takes the stairs up two at a time again for the first flight, then slows for the next three. She hammers on his door, and then, while she’s waiting, goes to get the key from the top of the electric box. She knocks again: again no answer. She opens the door and carefully closes it before she calls Cameron’s name. No need to risk waking Prince Charming downstairs again.
Her voice echoes in the room. Her eyes sweep the big space. Her note is gone. There’s a wine bottle on the counter that separates the kitchen area from the rest of the room. She crosses the room, touches it. Recorked, half gone, and an empty wineglass in the sink.
She checks the bathroom. Empty. She steps quickly to the bedroom door and stops in shock. Blood! Splotched everywhere on the bed and floor. And then she sees: not blood, but roses. Rose petals. She steps over the threshold. The bed is slightly rumpled – lain on, rather than slept in – and across its surface the broken roses and their stray petals lie, a brownish-red color. A running stain of damp on the wall shows where they hit first. The shards of curving glass lie scattered on the bed, crunch underfoot now as she steps across the room. She sits on the bed.
She’s talking aloud again, nervously swinging her eyes around the room. ‘Okay, he was here. He was here. He turned off the machine. He picked up his car. So? So. So. So. So. So he’s at work, maybe. So you call.’
Of course, she can’t remember the number at the bookstore. She calls information, then the store. Maeve answers. She says
no, Cameron isn’t there.
‘Shit,’ Lottie says. She punches her leg.
‘What? You still didn’t find him?’
‘No. And you haven’t heard from him either?’
‘Unh unh. But you know, he’s like, never in on Saturdays anyhow. So it doesn’t mean anything. It’s the day he always visits your mom.’
‘Ah!’ Thus the car, Lottie thinks. ‘So you think he’s out there?’
‘Well, really, who am I to say? But you could sure try anyhow.’
‘Yes. Well, thanks, Maeve.’
‘Yeah, let me know.’
‘Okay.’
Lottie calls information for the South Shore Nursing Home. Nothing. She and the operator fool around a bit and finally find it: the South Shore Elder Care Community. It takes three different connections there, long waits each time on a dead-sounding line, before Lottie gets the nurse in charge of her mother.
She’s out for a drive, the nurse says. Yes, with Mr Reed. They’re usually back by lunch.
Lottie looks at her watch. Almost ten. She’s pretty sure she knows how to get there. She can make it by ten-thirty, ten-forty-five if she doesn’t get lost.
‘What time is lunch?’ she asks.
‘She usually goes in to the eleven-thirty seating. Occasionally later on the days your brother visits, depending on how long they’re out for their little spin.’
‘Yes. Well, look. If you see him – Mr Reed, that is – could you tell him I’m coming out? I’m his sister. I’m Mrs Reed’s daughter. Could you tell him I’m on my way?’
‘Well, Miss Reed.’ Her voice is nippy. Lottie has affronted her. ‘If I see him, I will, of course. But you know, we’re not a message center for visitors, exactly. And I can’t guarantee I’ll actually see him, in any case.’
‘Yes, of course, I know that. I only meant if you see him,’ Lottie answers, straining to keep her voice polite.
‘Very good, then,’ the nurse says, crisply.
‘Thank you.’ Lottie hopes the anger in her voice isn’t audible.
‘You’re entirely welcome.’
Lottie hangs up. She defames the nurse loudly as she gathers her purse and car keys from the various places she’s dropped them. She returns Cameron’s key to the electric box and hurries back down the stairs.
But everything seems to work against her need for speed. She gets trapped in the maze of one-way streets near Cameron’s house and has to make the same circuit past the same winos several times, looking for a way out that will give her access to the expressway going south. They watch her blankly twice. The third time they’re ready; they call loudly to her: ‘Darling, you need a driver.’ ‘Let me drive your car for you, baby.’ Laughter. It was ever thus, Lottie thinks.
Once on the road, she realizes she isn’t going to make it to Scituate unless she gets some gas. Within five minutes of getting on the highway, she is pulled off it, waiting to have the tank filled. The gas station attendant, a former member of the third world, moves at third world speed. He practices his English on Lottie. ‘You are driving to the south?’ he asks while the pump whines. ‘You are working on your job?’ He has to return to the office to get change when Lottie hands him a twenty, and on his way, he stops to take someone else’s order and start that pump going, chatting with the driver too. All this is done with such a beneficent smile on his face that Lottie can’t even take the satisfaction of being surly to him. When she drives away, though, she lets her tires squeal loudly, and feels a mean pleasure in the noise.
Traffic is light in her direction. Lottie weaves in and among lanes, driving too fast. She’s thinking of the earlier visit to her mother this summer. The old woman didn’t seem to know who Lottie was; she definitely was clueless as to Ryan’s provenance – her face was blank as a baby’s, looking at him.
She was clearly happy to see Cam, though. She kept up a kind of patter, senseless to Lottie, for the half hour they stayed; and Cam seemed able occasionally to wrest meaning from it, to offer a response that clearly smacked of conversation to her. She’d smile and agree, or ponder and disagree.
In the car on the way home they talked about her. Lottie admired aloud Cam’s ability to translate her gibberish into something like language. He said he thought he could because he’d been there all along, he understood her patterns of speech, even though they’d slowly gotten more obscure.
Cam was driving, and Lottie was watching him while they talked. She’d watched him with their mother too, the careful civility with which he greeted the absurd, repetitive sentences, the polite attentiveness to every bit of meaningless drivel.
In the car she asked him, ‘So, you’ve just forgiven her for everything?’
He looked over at Lottie. ‘What’s to forgive, Lottie? You see the shape she’s in.’
‘She slapped you around with some regularity when we were kids.’
‘She stopped when I was as big as she was.’
Lottie snorted. ‘Just when stopping didn’t count morally, I’d argue.’
‘Wait, are we talking about child abuse?’ Ryan asked, leaning forward now.
‘No. Not child abuse,’ Cam snapped back. He looked up at Ryan in the rearview mirror. ‘That kind of label is the least useful—’
‘She drank too much,’ Lottie said quickly, her eyes moving back and forth from Ryan to Cam. ‘As you know, honey. And when she’d drunk a lot, she lost control.’ She redirected her voice to her brother. ‘But interestingly, only with Cam. She almost never hit me. Why do you suppose that was?’ she asked.
Cameron shrugged. When he spoke, his voice was mild again. ‘After Dad died, I think she was scared of everything. Of life. Of managing on her own. She wanted me to be the man. To run things. And every time I behaved like a kid, I think it terrified her. It reminded her that she was alone.’ Lottie watched his impassive face, the noble profile. ‘Therapy speaks,’ he said, and smiled wanly.
Lottie turned to Ryan, in the back seat. ‘Cameron was all of twelve when Daddy died,’ she said dryly.
Cameron’s lips pressed together. ‘I’m not justifying it, Charlotte. Just explaining it.’
‘Hey, no way you can justify it,’ Ryan said.
‘Touché,’ said Lottie.
Cameron didn’t answer.
‘I used to feel so guilty,’ Lottie said. ‘ “Why him? Why not me?” Is that what they call survivor’s guilt?’ she asked.
Cameron shrugged.
‘Actually, no,’ she said. ‘That’s not even true. First I’d feel glad. “Thank God it’s him and not me.” That’s what I really felt. I remember once or twice even laughing. While she hit you. Do you remember that, Cameron?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Laughing!’ she said.
‘God, Mom,’ Ryan said.
She looked back at him. ‘I suppose it was a kind of nervousness. But then I’d feel guilty. But really, guilty because I was so glad not to be the one. To have escaped. That’s what I can’t forgive.’ She looked at Cameron and waited for a response, but there wasn’t one. ‘Don’t you think that’s the worst thing she could have done to me? To make me glad for your pain? To make me complicit?’ She watched his still face, his graceful hands on the wheel. His busy eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, then to the road ahead, to the car moving alongside him. But never to Lottie.
‘Don’t you think that’s unforgivable?’ she persisted.
‘I don’t know, Char.’ He was tired of this. ‘Yes, sure. It’s unforgivable. Don’t forgive her.’
Lottie waited a minute, and then said, ‘Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll forgive her.’
Cameron had looked at her, then again back at the traffic. Finally he had smiled, his slight, composed smile. Lottie grinned back in gratified delight.
But the truth was, of course, that Lottie didn’t forgive her mother. Helpless, hopeless as her mother was now, Lottie had only to remember a few of the details of her childhood, her adolescence, to call up her anger once more. Perhaps most woun
ding of all, though, were the memories of visits she’d made to her mother with Ryan when he was little, visits in which her mother had simply seemed uninterested in him. After the first one, made the Christmas when Ryan was a little over two months old – when they had stayed for three nights before moving on to Derek’s parents for the same length of time – Derek had said he would never visit her mother again.
Lottie wouldn’t have been capable of such a decision then, but the moment he’d said it, she felt a hateful assent. She was still nursing Ryan; she still lived in the constant memory of the sundering, transforming pain of labor, in the daily awareness of the ecstatic relief of the moment after birth. She still thought of Ryan in part as a physical expression of something she hadn’t understood about herself, as well as a perfect and miraculous being. Her mother’s indifference to him, to herself as a mother, struck Lottie as sharply as a blow.
And though Derek’s position was a dead issue by the next year – they had separated by then – Lottie found herself more and more finding excuses not to make that trip back to Cambridge. After Derek had moved east again, she sometimes stayed for one night when she was bringing Ryan for his summer visit to his father, but her mother was even then so remote that as soon as Ryan was able to travel on his own, Lottie simply stopped coming east. For the last fifteen years or so, she had visited her mother perhaps once every three or four years, when business took her near Boston. Ryan hadn’t seen her until this summer.
She had Cameron’s reports in the meantime. And she wrote her mother the odd brisk and obligatory letter, the kind of letter someone else might write to a great-aunt with money, someone she needed to be polite to. But her mother rarely responded. When she did, it was likely to be a Hallmark card – an embossed rose, a bunch of heart-shaped balloons floating in a cloudless sky – complimenting Lottie in childish rhymes on being a wonderful daughter. Cameron’s fidelity to her over the years had made this distance possible; but also made Lottie feel a confused pang of guilt whenever she thought of him or her mother.