Evening News

by Marly Swick

  The television was on too loud, but she didn’t want to ask him to turn it down. This was an annoying habit of Ed’s that Teddy had obviously picked up already. She didn’t know how many times she had walked over and turned down the volume when Ed was watching something. The most annoying was when he fell asleep with the TV blaring so loud that you could hear it a football field away. It had always made her regard him as a dimwitted cretin. Only ten more minutes, she told herself, and the show would be over and they could walk to the market. And talk. She wanted to catch up on what he’d been doing and thinking since he’d been gone. When Teddy was younger, they used to drive out to the beach for what he called walkie talkies. It was one of their favorite things to do, just stroll along the shore and talk about stuff. In those days, like most kids, he was full of questions. What do you call X? Why does Y do that? How come Z is like this? It was the kid’s version of Jeopardy! every day. Back then he thought she was the one with all the answers.

  She knew that it wasn’t fair, but she resented Ed’s ease with Teddy — the way they horsed around and teased each other, like it was no big deal, like they didn’t have to worry about every word and gesture being taken the wrong way. She was afraid that Ed was stealing her son away from her. Stealing him back, to be fair. But it wasn’t fair! Ed had not lost a daughter. Lost her forever. No visitation rights, no holidays, nothing. Watching Ed and Teddy wrestling on the lawn, she had suddenly understood for the first time how Dan felt. She recognized it: this is what Dan must feel. In the law of cosmic accounts, her loss was not as great as his. It took her by surprise, this petty bean counting in the face of tragedy. You would think that tragedy would be a great leveler. The democracy of disaster. After the big disasters — the Oklahoma City bombing, the Pan Am crash, the Northridge earthquake — the families of the victims always seemed so united in their shared grief whenever you saw them on the news. Yet now she knew the ugly truth. She knew that down deep, the woman who lost two children was looking at the mother who lost only the one child, and the mother who lost the one child was looking at the woman who lost only a sister, thinking, My loss is greater than yours. The inspirational esprit de corps was all just a media conspiracy. The silver screen’s silver lining. And nobody had the guts to say it was bullshit. Even in the midst of their grief nobody wanted to look bad on national television. Smile, everybody, you’re on Candid Camera!

  During Final Jeopardy, which signaled that the show was almost over, Giselle tossed their paper plates and napkins into the pizza box and threw it in the trash. “Okay,” she announced, walking back into the living room. “Time to go to the store.”

  “What?” Teddy was busy channel surfing.

  She bent over and wrestled the remote out of his hands. “I said, time to go to the store.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “I thought you needed your ointment. What about cat scratch fever? Besides, we need to rent a movie.”

  “Can we get some ice cream?”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea.” She held the door open for him and then locked it behind them even though Vonnie rarely bothered to lock up. Slipping the key into the pocket of her shorts, Giselle led the way downstairs and across the lawn, with Teddy clattering along behind her. At the curb she started to cross the street but Teddy balked.

  “Hey,” he said. “Where’s the car?”

  “We don’t have a car. Vonnie’s got it at work.” Giselle pretended not to notice the scowl stealing across his face. “Come on, it’s only a couple of blocks. And it’s a beautiful evening.” The quiet neighborhood was a beehive of benign activity. A man in Bermuda shorts mowing his lawn. Two little girls jumping rope. A kid on a flashy bike doing wheelies down the block. An old woman walking two white Scotties on bright red leashes.

  “But these boots hurt my feet,” he grumbled. “I didn’t know we were going to have to walk. Can’t I wait for you here?”

  “Teddy!” She counted to ten and began again in a calmer tone of voice. “I’m going to the store and you’re going with me, and that’s final. Do you hear me?”

  She thought she’d really blown it now, but to her surprise he fell into step beside her, and amazed her further by offering a polite observation. “The grass is so green here,” he said. “It almost looks fake. Like AstroTurf.”

  “That’s true.” She nodded her head in agreement. “It rains a lot here in the summer.”

  “Not like California.” He stooped down and petted one of the Scotties as they passed by. The old woman smiled at him, and he smiled back. Giselle put her hand on the back of his skinny neck and gave him a little squeeze, and he didn’t shrug her off. She began to relax. Every transition required a little adjustment period, she reminded herself. They were just settling in to being together again.

  “You know, you used to live just around the corner here,” she said. “I’ll show you the house when we pass it. Maybe you’ll even remember it.”

  Teddy looked mildly interested. “How old was I?”

  “Well, from the time you were a baby until you were four.”

  As they got closer to the boy on the flashy bike, he rode past them once and circled back around, then hopped off his bike and stood there watching them approach. “Hey,” he said, “Ted?”

  Teddy stared at him for a moment and then grinned as a look of recognition lit up his face. “Hi, Brent. Neat bike.”

  “Thanks. I live over there.” He pointed to a big brick house with green trim a couple of doors down. “You live near here?”

  Teddy shook his head. “I used to live in California, but now I’m staying with my dad off of Old Cheney Road. My aunt lives here.” He pointed to the top floor of the house across the street.

  Giselle stood there waiting to be introduced, frowning at the phrase “used to live in California.” She decided to let it go. This didn’t seem like the appropriate time or place to get into anything. Finally Teddy noticed her standing there and said, “This is Brent. He’s on my soccer team.”

  Giselle nodded and smiled, pleasantly surprised when Brent stuck out his hand and gave her a gentlemanly handshake.

  “You want to play?” Brent asked. “I just got this cool new computer game. Sim City. Ever played it?”

  “Yeah,” Teddy said, “with my uncle.” He looked at Giselle. “Can I, Mom? Please?”

  Shit, she thought, this is swell, really swell. I haven’t seen him in two weeks and he comes over for one measly night and now this. Talk about quality time. She sighed and looked at her watch. “Okay. It’s five-forty. You can play until seven-thirty. Then I want you to come home and we’ll watch a movie together. Got that?”

  “Got it!” He looked so happy as he ran off with Brent that she couldn’t really hold it against him. He was a kid, after all. Kids liked to play with other kids. It was good to see him acting like a normal kid again. His aching feet didn’t seem to be giving him any trouble as he chased after Brent on his bike.

  She continued on to the store alone. An undulating lawn sprinkler set too close to the sidewalk doused her as she walked by. The cool water felt good against her sweaty skin. As she turned the corner onto Eighteenth Street, she wondered if she should have gone to Brent’s house and introduced herself to his mother. She wondered how Brent’s mother would react if she knew that her son’s nice new friend had shot his little sister. What a relief it must be to Teddy, she thought, to be in a new place where no one knew. Fame might have its rewards, but anonymity was the true blessing. Used to live in California. Teddy’s voice kept running through her head. When he’d said that, it had taken all her self-restraint not to protest, to set him straight. It had hit her like a punch in the gut. Their home was in California. It was too soon to even think about moving. It had been only two months. They were all still in shock. Even Hannah, the inept therapist, had cautioned them not to make any major decisions too soon.

  The peonies were in bloom, a riot of deep pink and white bouffant blossoms. The bushes bloomed for only
a couple of weeks; they were already looking a little blowsy. She thought of her own desiccated garden back home, the parched brown lawn. Their landlords, a nice young couple who had been transferred to Fort Worth and still hoped to return to California someday, would be disappointed when they saw the place. Last year Giselle had sent them a Polaroid of the newly planted garden in all its modest glory.

  At the corner of Eighteenth and A Street, as she waited for some traffic to pass, a young stud in a red Camaro whistled at her. It caught her by surprise and lifted her spirits a notch. Every day she waited to hear from Dan. Something, anything. A phone call, a letter, even a forwarded bill. But she hadn’t heard a word. She couldn’t believe it. When her first marriage had fallen apart, there had been months of bickering, door slamming, name-calling, and sleeping on the sofa. By the time she had actually packed her car and split, they were both exhausted. There had been nothing left to say. Which seemed like the way it should be. Not like this, so quick and quiet. It didn’t seem possible that a marriage could just suddenly vanish like a puff of smoke, or a house of cards in a gust of wind — now you see it, now you don’t! — with so much left unsaid. It felt surreal. It felt like a dream that had turned into a nightmare and then she woke up and here she was — back in Kansas. Only it happened to be Nebraska. Except for the thin gold band on her finger, it might all have been in her mind.

  The market was crowded with people buying food for supper and so air-conditioned that she could feel the goosebumps rising on her arms and legs. The video rental was in the rear of the store. As she perused the new releases, it occurred to her that she had no idea what movies Teddy had seen since he’d been staying with his dad, and she felt a fresh twinge of annoyance at his ditching her. The new releases were pretty well picked over anyway. She couldn’t seem to focus. She felt out of touch and indecisive, sure that whatever she picked would be a bad choice. Finally, anxious to be done with it, she grabbed a copy of Jurassic Park. She figured he’d already seen it so many times that one more time wouldn’t hurt. She paid for the movie and made her way back into the grocery section to the ice cream freezers. Here at least she felt on solid ground; she knew what Teddy liked. Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough was his favorite, just as she knew that Häagen-Dazs Rum Raisin was Dan’s favorite. And suddenly as she picked up the small container of Ben & Jerry’s, it struck her that it was not impossible that she and Dan would never see each other again. Even though they knew all each other’s little likes and dislikes, it was not inconceivable that they could just split and go their separate ways. The divorce, if it came to that, could be conducted via mail, telephone, fax. There was nothing holding them together. They didn’t own a house or stocks or even a car jointly. Most of the furniture came from Dan’s mother’s house. Aside from their daughter, they had accumulated very little, certainly nothing worth squabbling over. They could just walk away and never lay eyes on each other again. For as long as they lived. The idea chilled her to the bone. She was shivering as she hurried to the express line, grabbed a five-dollar bill from her pocket, and paid for the ice cream.

  Back outside, she walked quickly, trying to warm herself up again. Thinking about how when she and Ed split up, they knew that they would be bound together for life. They might no longer be husband and wife, but they would always be Teddy’s father and mother. You could set asunder marriage, but parenthood — for better or for worse — was until death do you part. The real thing. At the time, the thought of never being free of Ed had seemed burdensome and unfair. Un-American. Didn’t everyone have some inalienable right to start over? Three strikes and you’re out? This was only her first strike and yet there they were, yoked together forever. But now, for the first time, she realized how grateful she was that she had not been free to leave Ed behind in a cloud of dust, how grateful she was that he was still in her life, how grateful for having the opportunity to pick up the pieces of the marriage and build something new out of them. Not that it was easy. At first it had been especially fucking miserable. Sometimes it was still a pain in the ass, but considering the alternative — well, she didn’t want to consider the alternative. The alternative was unacceptable. And an unacceptable alternative was no alternative.

  ***

  As she walked up the steps to the apartment, one of the guys opened the door of the downstairs apartment and said, “Hey, we got a package for you. Special delivery.” He was bare-chested, tanned with a furry map of dark hair, which he scratched unselfconsciously as he handed her the flat envelope. From Dan, she thought, at last, and smiled brightly as she thanked him, her heart accelerating as she ran upstairs. Since she had been away, she kept imagining ways they could start over. They could move to Santa Barbara, say, or San Francisco. Dan was always saying how much he preferred northern California. Part of her still couldn’t believe he wouldn’t come around. On the landing, fumbling in her pocket for the key, she turned over the envelope and saw that the return address was Chicago. It was addressed to Vonnie. She felt all the energy drain right out of her. Don’t cry, she told herself. Teddy will be back any minute. She dug deeper into her pocket and then tried the other pocket even though she knew the key was in her righthand pocket. Which was empty except for some change. The damn key must have fallen out when she paid for the ice cream. They were locked out. This is the last straw, she thought, the last fucking straw, as she trudged back downstairs to ask the hairy-chested guy if she could use his phone.

  At seven-thirty on the dot he tells Brent that he has to go. Brent says, “Can’t you stay a little longer? Your mom won’t mind.” But Teddy says no. He has been keeping an eye on the clock because he feels a little guilty for leaving his mother like that when he’s only spending the one night. Even though he’s really had a good time with Brent. The only sort of bad thing about his dad’s place is that there’s no other kids around. The nearest neighbors are too far away.

  When he walks across the street, he’s surprised to see his mother sitting out on the steps with her head in her hands. She doesn’t even see him. He has to say, “Mom?” And then she looks up, and he sees that she has been crying. Her eyes are all red. “What’s the matter?” he asks, his heart pounding. “Are you sick?” He knows that she has made it a point not to cry in front of him. Sometimes back in California he would hear her crying in her room. He knows she’s probably thinking about his sister again. Seeing him has probably just reminded her. He wishes he were back at his dad’s.

  She shakes her head and says, “I’m sorry. It’s nothing, really.” She fakes a smile. “It’s just that we’re locked out — I lost the key — and the ice cream’s all melted.” She holds up the paper bag for him to see. “Your favorite. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I’m sorry, honey.”

  “That’s okay,” he says, feeling relieved. “I had an ice cream sandwich at Brent’s house anyway.” He says this to make her feel better, but it only seems to make things worse. She says, “Oh,” and her fake smile disappears.

  “The key must have fallen out of my pocket,” she tells him. “I called Vonnie and she said she’d come let me in but” — she shrugs and frowns at her watch — “it’s been almost forty minutes.” Suddenly she looks angry. “I think that’s pretty inconsiderate, don’t you?”

  Teddy nods. “You could call her again.”

  “Yeah, well, the thing is, I don’t like to keep disturbing the neighbors. It’s embarrassing.”

  “I could ask them,” Teddy offers, trying to be helpful. “Or I could call my dad.”

  “What’s he going to do?” she snaps at him. “He doesn’t have a key.”

  “You don’t have to yell,” he mutters. “It’s not my fault.”

  “I’m sorry.” She lets out a deep sigh. “I just wanted us to have a nice night. And everything seems to be going wrong.”

  He picks up the movie lying on the ground next to the bag. Jurassic Park.

  “I couldn’t think what to get,” she says, sounding depressed.

  “That’s okay. I
haven’t seen it in a while.” He looks up at the apartment. “If there was a ladder, maybe I could crawl in the window. I bet Brent’s dad has a ladder,” he says, excited by the possibility of climbing the ladder like a fireman to the rescue.

  “I don’t think —” His mom stops talking as Vonnie drives up and toots her horn.

  He runs to the curb to meet her. She gets out of the Tracker and whirls him around. “Hey, Buster!” she says. She’s always called him Buster, which he sort of likes.

  “Sorry it took so long,” she says to his mother.

  “It?” His mother glares at her.

  Vonnie ignores her. She keeps joking with him as they race up the stairs. His mom follows behind, walking like an old lady. Sometimes he finds it hard to believe that his mom is Vonnie’s little sister.

  His mother is about to throw the ice cream in the trash when Vonnie says, “What are you doing? Don’t be silly.” She grabs the carton and puts it in the freezer, then announces that she’s taking the rest of the night off. Suddenly everyone’s mood seems to improve. Vonnie makes popcorn in the microwave, and the three of them sit on the sofa in front of the fan watching Jurassic Park, which Vonnie claims is one of her favorite movies. His mom drinks beer. Vonnie and he drink Diet Coke. After her second beer his mom starts to make up funny dialogue that cracks them up. Teddy has forgotten that his mom can be funny. One time he snorts and sputters Coke from his nose, which makes them all laugh even more. Vonnie calls time out for an intermission and comes back with the ice cream carton and three spoons. He thinks his aunt is cool about stuff like this. His mom would have insisted on serving it in bowls. Only the cat has her own bowl of ice cream, which she licks at cautiously, keeping a suspicious eye on Teddy. When he showed his aunt the big scratch on his face, expecting a little sympathy, all she said was “You ought to know better than to hold a cat that doesn’t want to be held. How would you like someone to hold you against your will, Buster?” And she reached over and locked her arms around him while he struggled to break free until he finally had to give up. She was really strong for a girl. “You would’ve made a good wrestler,” he told her. And she said, “Why, thank you. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” And he couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.