Evening News

by Marly Swick

  “It’s too early for supper,” she said. “Why don’t you call your dad back while I watch the news.”

  As Teddy carried the phone out onto the back stoop, she went into the living room, flopped down on the sofa, and reached for the remote. Back in Nebraska they had watched Tom Brokaw, a fellow Midwesterner, but Dan had converted her to CNN. Wolf Blitzer was standing on the lawn of the White House, looking and talking like a college professor. She clicked to NBC and felt a sudden rush of comfort as Tom’s clean-shaven face and prairie vowels — his solid presence — soothed her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him.

  After a few minutes Teddy appeared in the doorway holding the telephone to his chest. “Dad wants to talk to you.”

  She sighed, muted the volume on the TV, and stretched out her hand for the receiver. Maybe it was the nostalgic background murmur of Brokaw’s voice, but as she listened to Ed asking her how they were doing, she found herself crying. Teddy hung his head and then disappeared down the hall to his room. On the other end, Ed fumbled for some magic words of comfort.

  “I can’t believe that guy just took off,” he said. He never referred to Dan by name. His voice sounded indignant. “What about you and Teddy?”

  “He’s coming back tomorrow.” She tried leaping to Dan’s defense, but her voice didn’t quite make the leap. Damn Teddy, she thought. He would have to go and tell Ed that Dan was gone. It wasn’t any of Ed’s business.

  “Camping!” Ed snorted. “What is this — the Boy Scouts?”

  “He’s the sort of person who needs to work through things alone. I can respect that.”

  “I thought you said you needed to work things through as a family. That’s why Teddy couldn’t come stay with me. Now this clown’s off sitting around a campfire somewhere in the redwoods feeling sorry for himself.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you about this,” she said stiffly. But, in fact, she felt better listening to Ed berating Dan, saying aloud the things she couldn’t help thinking to herself. “Teddy’s upset. I better go check on him.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to come out there? I hate to think of you and Teddy going through this alone.” He sounded as earnest and genuine as Tom Brokaw.

  “He’s coming back tomorrow,” she repeated. “We’re not really alone. It’s just . . .” — her voice trailed off — “oh, never mind.” It was too much effort to speak. Or think.

  Ed waited. Someone else would have prodded her, but he seemed prepared to wait indefinitely. Finally she said, “I have to go.”

  “I just want you to know I’m here for you,” he added quickly, before she could hang up. “Teddy and you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “He’s my son. You’re his mother. Nothing can change that.”

  He had said the same thing, word for word, when she’d left for California. Standing in the driveway next to their packed car, sad and angry. At the time his words had struck her more like a curse than a comfort. But this time she felt a wave of gratitude wash over her. “Thank you,” she said meekly.

  “Tell Teddy I’ll call tomorrow.” He waited until she hung up.

  The news had ended. She slipped the video into the VCR. The Land Before Time. Teddy had seen it countless times when he was much younger, but she didn’t have the heart to argue with him at Blockbuster, even though she was worried that it was a sign of regression. The therapist had warned her this could happen — one of her only useful insights to date. As she slid the frozen pizza into the oven, she wondered whether there was a support group for parents whose child had killed a sibling. SADS. Sibling Accidental Death Society. There seemed to be support groups for everything these days. It was human nature, apparently, in this era of increasing specialization, to form a herd of fellow sufferers in the particular area of your tragic expertise. Although she had never been a joiner, she could understand the appeal of such a group. A safe place where you could admit your ugliest thoughts, reveal your worst self, and have others nod their head in recognition. A therapist might have heard it all before, but that was a far cry from having felt it. Like labor pains. No amount of talk or reading could prepare you for the real thing. There were doors that no amount of imagination or empathy could open. You crossed the threshold, and you were in a new country. On another planet. Repatriated. If you were lucky enough, that is, to stumble across a settlement of your own kind. She didn’t know how you went about finding such settlements, the appropriate support group. Oprah? The Internet? Word of mouth? Maybe you didn’t have to do anything. Maybe if you just waited, a representative would knock on your door, teach you the secret handshake.

  While Teddy picked at his pizza and watched the movie, Giselle sat out on the back porch drinking vodka and tonics. She thought that Dan might have taken the bottle of vodka with him, but he hadn’t. She imagined he saw this time alone as a sort of purification ritual — that sort of thing appealed to him, appealed to his literary sensibility. It was a warm, clear night. She could hear the Beemers’ dog whining and scratching at the back door to be let inside. The faint circular outline of the wading pool was still visible even though her father had attempted to rake it away. Her parents had been calling every day. She couldn’t bring herself to tell them that Dan wasn’t there. She could imagine their silent consternation across the wire if she told them he’d gone off with Greg for a couple of days. As she got up to refill her drink, the phone rang.

  “Just let it ring,” she said to Teddy as he skidded across the linoleum in his socks and made a lunge for the receiver.

  “But what if it’s my dad?” he said.

  “It’s not going to be your dad. You just talked to him.”

  The caller hung up the instant the answering machine clicked on. No message.

  “See. It was probably just someone trying to sell us something.” She imagined shouting at the unsuspecting solicitor: Look, you asshole, my daughter just died and we’re not interested in any life insurance just now!

  “I’ll be on the back porch, reading,” she told Teddy as she carried her book back outside, although she knew she wouldn’t bother to open it. She still couldn’t seem to focus her mind. She’d had to read the cooking directions on the frozen pizza three times. The book she was carrying around was Billy Budd, the next novel on the syllabus after The Scarlet Letter, even though she had already made up her mind to drop her classes.

  As she was rereading the same paragraph for the third time, she heard the phone ringing in the kitchen again. Four rings and then the machine picked up. After the beep she heard her friend Ellen’s voice: “Hi, it’s me. We’re taking Zack to the zoo tomorrow afternoon and thought maybe Teddy’d like to come along. Give you and Dan a little time alone. We can pick him up at school — it’s on our way. Just let me know. Bye.” Giselle sighed. She still hadn’t thanked Ellen for baby-sitting Teddy the day of the funeral. She didn’t even have the energy to talk to her friends. Then almost immediately the phone rang again. Vonnie. “Hey, Gigi, it’s your sister. I know you’re there. I’ll count to ten. One, two, three, four, five . . . Okay be that way. Six, seven —” Just as Giselle was about to give in and answer it, Vonnie hung up — which was just like her, not even bothering to count all the way to ten.

  On the way back to the patio, she glanced in the hallway mirror and noticed that her face was wet with tears. She hadn’t realized she was crying. Too much vodka. She screwed the lid back on the bottle. Someone switched on the floodlight Bill Beemer had installed as an antiburglar device. It lit up their backyard like a movie set. Dan had resented it even before the accident. The light was harsh and glaring. He said it made him feel as if he were living in a combat zone. She tried to picture Dan somewhere dark and quiet, sitting by a small flickering campfire. Maybe smoking a joint. Probably wishing he had never married her. She peered at her watch and went inside.

  The television was off. The house seemed unnaturally quiet. “Teddy?” she called out.

  No response. She sighed and op
ened his door a crack. The room was empty. Trying not to panic, she checked the windows and saw the screens were undisturbed. You had to walk down the hallway to leave the house. She didn’t think he could have slipped by her. She checked the master bedroom, the bathroom, and then reluctantly opened the door to Trina’s room. He had climbed into her crib and was curled up in a fetal position hugging her stuffed bunny. He was sleeping soundly, but she could see a trail of dried tears on his cheeks. She reached out to touch him. Her hand hovered in the air above his head. Suddenly she wasn’t sure if she was going to stroke his cheek or slap it. The hand seemed to belong to someone else. It was trembling. His eyes flew open, and he stared at her, holding his breath, as if he knew what was going on inside her. Her hand dropped to her side. She felt incapable of coping with this. All of it. It was just too much. She had coped with an unplanned pregnancy, divorce, single parenthood — you name it — but this, this was too much. She turned and headed toward the door. “It’s time for bed,” she said. “Your bed.” She knew he needed something more from her, but this was the best she could do. Trina’s absence was like a crown of thorns encircling her heart. Each breath seemed to stab her in a fresh tender spot.

  ***

  After Teddy had completed his bedtime ritual, she wandered back out to the living room. It was still only nine-thirty. She wished she had rented a movie for herself at Blockbuster. The idea had occurred to her, but as she skimmed over the various sections — comedy, drama, family entertainment, horror — nothing seemed appropriate. She thought they should have them arranged like greeting cards: wedding, birth, congratulations, sympathy. She walked into the kitchen and wrapped the leftover pizza in foil and stuck it in the refrigerator. She could nuke it for Teddy’s dinner tomorrow. She hadn’t eaten any herself. She pulled out a butterscotch pudding and a juice box. For the past few days the only thing she could stomach was kiddie food — pudding, Cheerios, rice cakes, applesauce, SpaghettiOs. She had even eaten an old jar of Gerber’s strained carrots that she’d found in the back of the cupboard.

  The answering machine was right there, the red light blinking. She knew she should call Ellen back and say yes, Teddy would love to go to the zoo with them, but she didn’t really feel like talking to her. Or worse yet, her husband, a shrink, who always made Giselle nervous. He had this habit of echoing the ends of your sentences as if to ask, Did you really mean to say that?

  She thought maybe she’d call her sister back. At least Vonnie was depressed, too, still mourning her lover. Giselle had met Bev only once, shortly before Trina was born, when Vonnie and Bev had flown out to L.A. for a training seminar — something to do with computers — Bev had to attend. They went to Zuma Beach. Bev wore a black crocheted bikini and had a body that made Jane Fonda look like Roseanne. She worked out with weights, she had explained, flexing a perfectly sculpted arm. Vonnie had been homecoming queen before she’d gone off to college and written her parents a letter informing them she was gay. Included in the brief letter was a snapshot of Vonnie with her shoulder-length blond hair reduced to a buzz cut. In a postscript she had bequeathed all her teenage cosmetics and jewelry to Giselle, who had been both thrilled and bewildered, not quite understanding the whole deal.

  The thing that had originally brought Giselle and Ed together, that had helped them cross the line from friendship to intimacy in high school, was the fact that they both had gay siblings. In Nebraska. Ed’s older brother Brice had come out and was active in gay politics, always giving speeches and getting his picture in the Daily Nebraskan, the university paper. The guys in high school used to give Ed shit about it. He would blush and look as though he wanted to sink into a hole. No one except Giselle’s best friend, Laura, knew about Vonnie because she was far away, at the University of Wisconsin, and never came home for holidays. But Giselle knew how Ed must feel. So one day when she noticed him looking particularly miserable after a bout of macho razzing, she took him aside and confided in him about her sister. “But Yvonne was a cheerleader!” he’d exclaimed, completely shocked. “She went steady with Bo Larsen.” He shook his head. “Are you sure?” It was the most they had ever talked, even though they had known each other since third grade. A couple of weeks later Ed called and asked her to one of his wrestling matches. They started going out together. Ed’s brother gave him a key to his apartment in a peeling white Victorian, and they used to go there to make out on Brice’s king-size waterbed when he wasn’t home.

  Giselle tossed the empty butterscotch pudding into the trash and was skimming through her address book to find her sister’s new number — Vonnie had moved back to Lincoln, to a smaller, cheaper apartment, after Bev died — when she noticed Ed’s number written in on the automatic dial list so that Teddy could just press a button and get his father. A sudden impulse made her finger punch the number 1. After a couple of rings Ed picked up the phone, his voice froggy with sleep. She imagined him nodding off in the ratty velour armchair, a half-empty beer in hand, with a Star Trek rerun on the crummy thirteen-inch TV. Although he’d probably bought a new and better TV set by now — it had been five years, after all; she’d give him the benefit of the doubt. He seemed surprised to hear her voice. She never called him.

  “I’m afraid,” she said without any preamble. “I’m afraid Teddy thinks I blame him. That I don’t love him anymore.” She’d had too much to drink; her voice sounded boozy and tearful.

  “Do you?” Ed asked.

  “It’s hard,” she sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know if you love him?” Ed cleared his throat nervously. She could visualize him chewing on his thumb, something that had always driven her crazy.

  She didn’t say anything. She felt suddenly nauseous; the butterscotch pudding had not mixed well with the vodka. Or maybe it was what she was saying. She felt her skin break into a cold sweat.

  “I love him. Of course I love him,” she said, trying not to sound impatient. “I’m his mother.” She sighed. “But I was also her mother. No matter what I do, I feel like I’m being disloyal to someone.” What she wanted to say is how much easier it would be — well, not easier exactly, but more manageable somehow — if Dan were Teddy’s real father. Then they would be in the same boat at least. They might handle it differently, but at least they’d be handling it in the same boat. But even half drunk she knew better than to say this to Ed. Instead she said, “I was just remembering when Dinky died and you dug his grave.”

  To her amazement, Ed started to cry. Hoarse, shuddering sobs. She couldn’t remember ever hearing him cry before, not even when she left him and took his son with her halfway across the country. To a place Ed had never even been to.

  “Oh, Ed,” she said, at a loss, “I’m sorry,” and hung up. She stumbled to the bedroom and lay down on top of the rumpled quilt, keeping one foot steady on the floor to prevent the room from spinning. There was a cheap plastic light fixture on the ceiling. They had never used it before Dan broke the bedside lamp. The bottom of the plastic shade was littered with dead insects. It was disgusting. She hauled herself up and turned off the light. Darkness was better anyway. She had always preferred making love in the dark. Ed had never seemed to mind, but Dan insisted that they leave a light on, or at least burn a candle. He seemed to view sex in the dark as something for unenlightened people, people who found oral sex perverse — which she had to admit she had until Dan educated her on the subject. At first she had felt annoyed with Ed for being such a pedestrian lover, but later, in rare nostalgic moods, she would feel a certain tenderness for their white-bread, puppylike gropings. They had both been virgins. Dan, on the other hand, had revised and polished her style in bed just as he had on paper. After the first time they made love, she had gone into the bathroom to pee; when she turned on the light, she’d half expected to see comments in green ink scrawled on her naked body: A little more here. A bit awkward. Great! Nice work, Giselle! Before Dan, sex was something she could take or leave, something she desired in theory more than in practice. But w
ith Dan, she daydreamed about sex while she was grocery shopping or sitting in traffic jams. When Trina was a baby, before she slept through the night, she seemed to have a sixth sense. On the rare nights they weren’t too exhausted to attempt to make love, Trina would wake up crying the moment they started to fuck. (Dan had taught her to say the word fuck. She and Ed had never much graduated from their high school vocabulary; they referred to sex as it.) If they tried to ignore her, her crying would escalate from a lovelorn whimper to a jealous wail of betrayal. But now the loud silence coming from her room would be even harder to ignore, impossible to quiet. Now she wondered if they would ever make love in the same way again.

  Suddenly she had to know for sure what Dan was feeling. Not what she thought he was feeling, but his actual thoughts in his own words. She rolled over to his side of the bed and slid her hand underneath the mattress, searching for his journal, which she knew he hid there. He had been keeping a journal for years and required all his students to keep journals for class, something else they all grumbled about. His old journals he kept locked in a file cabinet in his office, but the current journal he kept at home so he could write in it at night, usually after she was asleep. Until now she had never looked at it, although she had been tempted. She knew how appalled he would be at this violation of his privacy. And she was worried that if she read something that disturbed her, she wouldn’t be able to keep it to herself. But this was different. Everything had changed. She ran her hand back and forth several times until she gave up. He must have taken it with him. Of course he would. She pictured him hunched in his small dome tent, writing by flashlight. She remembered his telling them the first day of class that writing was easy: you just opened up a vein and let the blood drip onto the page.