Circle of Three

by Patricia Gaffney

  “First of all, you don’t pay me enough to be a partner,” I said—since then I’ve thought of a dozen much more scathing ways I could’ve put that. “Brian, why don’t you just admit it. This is about that night, isn’t it?”

  “What night?” The blankness, the absolute incomprehension! I wanted to scream at him, but I knew I’d only feel more humiliated afterward, and he’d still win. All I could do was insult him, inadequately—“You are a complete joke!”—and storm out of his office.

  “What is it with men?” Chris wailed. “How could he be so stupid, and then be so mean about it?”

  “But he’s never done anything with you, never tried—”

  “Never, nothing. Oz asked me that, too, of course, but there’s never been anything, not even a hint.”

  “It’s weird.”

  “It’s weird. And it’s not even so bad that he tried, as rotten as that is, it’s that he got rid of you afterward! I can’t get over that. I’d quit if I could, but I can’t.”

  “No, you can’t quit, that wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s what Oz says, but I tell you, I feel like it. I’m seeing Brian in a whole new light. I can’t trust him anymore, and it changes everything.”

  “Chris, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. If I had something else lined up, you know? Another job to go to. But right now we really need the money, and I feel like I’m stuck.”

  Harry threw his cup on the floor and shrieked in my ear.

  “Modean had to go out, so I’ve got Harry for a couple of hours. As you can tell, it’s lunchtime.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, see you Monday, then. At the launch.”

  “You’re really coming?”

  “Of course!”

  “What a pal.”

  “Listen, now that you’re unemployed again, you want to have lunch or something? I could meet you. Away from the office—so you’d never have to see him.”

  “I’d love it. How about next week?”

  We made the arrangements, and after we hung up I thought, There. One good thing had come out of the Other School—my friendship with Chris. Even Brian couldn’t ruin that.

  “Where’ll it be, big guy, your place or mine? Yours,” I decided, eyeing my just-cleaned kitchen floor. If I fed the baby here, I’d have to wash it again afterward. “Want to go home?”

  “Mama?”

  “No, Mama’s not home yet, she’ll be home soon. Let’s go eat lunch!”

  “Lunts!”

  In Modean’s kitchen, I set Harry in his high chair and gave him half a banana to eat while I heated his SpaghettiOs in the microwave. He was a lazy, sweet-natured baby, and so funny, just his facial expressions cracked me up. Spending the afternoon with him was like watching cartoons or the Marx Brothers; you got lost in deep play. “Handsome boy,” I cooed, setting his bowl in front of him. I gave him his spoon, too, but only as a courtesy; he ate everything with his fingers. “Want me to feed you?” I offered, waving the spoon. No. His bib was the plastic kind with a food-catcher at the bottom; by meal’s end, it was half full of spaghetti, and the other half was on his head. “Did you eat anything?” He laughed at me, banging his cup on the table in time with his bouncing legs. He could speak in sentences, long ones, you could even detect the punctuation. You just couldn’t get the words. I couldn’t; Modean swore she understood everything.

  I cleaned him up at the kitchen sink, got a pudding pop from the freezer, and carried him out to the front yard. Should I put sunscreen on him? We’d stay under the maple tree by the porch; surely the dappled shade would be okay for half an hour. I couldn’t remember constantly worrying about sunscreen for Ruth when she was an infant, but maybe I did. What different babies they were. There sat Harry on the grass like a Buddha, quietly absorbed in picking apart a dandelion. If I’d turned my back on Ruth at that age, she’d have been three doors down the street by now, staggering along in that cute, drunken, hand-fluttering walk that made you laugh until you realized she was going, she was gone.

  Harry said, “B-bb-bbbb,” which gave me the idea of blowing bubbles—possibly his intent in the first place, you never knew. I carried him inside, found the bottle of bubble liquid in his toy box in the family room, carried him back out to the porch steps. Ruth used to love bubbles. Me, too. Harry let me go first. I blew a perfect stream of airy, iridescent globes, so pretty, gone in seconds, like fireworks. “Bbbbb,” the baby said, and I put my cheek next to his soft one and said, “Bbbbb” with a little more air, and we blew a big floating bubble that didn’t pop until a grass blade speared it, poof.

  A car slowed in front of my house and started to park. Not a car, a truck. Jess’s pickup. I couldn’t see him through the wavy, sun-streaked windshield, but he saw me—he backed up forty feet and parked in front of Modean’s house instead of mine. I hadn’t seen him in three days.

  “Tuck,” the baby said. He sat between my legs, leaning back against my chest, pointing. I should get up, but some other kind of weight besides Harry’s was keeping me where I was. Jess had on white tennis shoes, maybe running shoes. Was he a jogger? I hadn’t known. The jogging farmer. Black jeans and a blue T-shirt, and he was striding toward me, swinging his arms, Jess. Coming up the walk, and Harry stopped pointing and scooted back, amazed. Jess came right up to us and squatted beside my left leg. I could see a place on his jaw where he’d cut himself shaving, and for some reason it made me weak. I rested my chin on the top of Harry’s head. Jess smiled his slow, two-stage smile. “Hi,” he said. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Harry. That’s Jess,” I said softly in the baby’s ear. Harry could be skittish with strangers. “Can you say ‘hi, Jess’?”

  “Tuck,” Harry said.

  “He likes your truck.”

  “Tuck!”

  So then we had to get up and go over to Jess’s truck and look at it and touch it, and Jess let Harry sit in the front seat and play with the steering wheel. I wondered how we looked together. Could people tell we were lovers? I had to remind myself to keep my distance, not lean into him or absentmindedly stick my fingers inside his waistband or in his back pocket—giveaway intimacies I already took for granted. “I missed you,” I murmured, surreptitiously brushing his hip with the back of my hand. “I wanted to come see you today, but my neighbor called and asked me to sit for Harry. I couldn’t say no.” Especially since Modean had been so good about watching out for Ruth while I was up to my eyes in ark animals.

  “I haven’t been home all day,” Jess said. “Missed you, too. Can we go somewhere and kiss?”

  I laughed, weak again. “Maybe. What have you been doing?”

  “Last-minute things at the river. Guess what I dreamed last night.”

  “What?”

  “The ark sank.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Broke in half and went straight down.”

  “Like the Titanic. Did the animals float?” He laughed at me. “Well, did they?”

  “I don’t know, I woke up.” He took Harry’s hand off the gear shift for the third time. “The portholes are perfect.”

  “Really? Do they show up?” Eldon let me paint extra animal faces on three-foot round plywood shapes Jess cut out for me on his band saw. I hadn’t seen them on the ark yet. “Did you put them on all three levels or just around the bottom?”

  “All three. The chimpanzees look great hanging off the lower deck. That was a great idea.”

  “Maybe I’ll drive over this afternoon and look. I know, I said I wouldn’t, but I can’t stand it.” The way I made myself stop putting finishing touches on the animals, which were still in Jess’s barn, was to take all the paint cans and brushes over to Landy’s and store them in his basement. The end. It’s over.

  “What have you been up to?” Jess asked.

  “A million things, all the things I’ve been putting off since this started. Yesterday I cleaned my house, and it took all day. I’ve been calling people, reminding them I exist. And trying to think
about a job, but that’s not working—I can’t see past Monday. Will you be glad when it’s over, or sorry?”

  “Both.”

  “Me, too.”

  Harry was getting more aggressive; he wanted to take off the hand brake. “It’s time for his nap,” I told Jess, scooping the baby up. “Come inside with me. You don’t have to go right away, do you?” Harry gave a bitter wail. His roly-poly body became all muscle, all of it straining to crawl over my shoulder, fat arms outstretched and beseeching, “Tuck! Tuck!”

  Hugs, apple juice, and more bubbles calmed him down. I put him on the floor and let him play with the pots and pans in “his” cabinet (all the others were padlocked) while I heated water for his bottle. “Modean should be home any sec, but I’ll put him down first—”Jess turned me around and pulled me into a long, hot kiss. “Oh, I really missed you,” I said, holding tight, “I didn’t know I would this much.”

  “You’re the only thing in my head. You were before, but that was nothing.”

  “Can you stay? When Modean comes, we could go to my house.”

  “Where’s Ruth?”

  “At Krystal’s—she works all day on Saturdays.” We kissed again—but it scared Harry for some reason, so we had to stop.

  Modean came home. We three chatted in the kitchen for a while. Once she felt comfortable, Modean could talk, and she liked Jess; she’d told me so even before I’d started bringing his name up, so I could talk about him to someone—one of the frustrations of a secret love affair, I’d discovered. Precious minutes ticked by in the kitchen, and eventually Jess said, “Well, Carrie, we should probably go see about that flying squirrel.”

  Modean didn’t even blink. “Oh, okay, see you guys. Thanks again, Carrie,” she called, waving to us as we walked across the driveway, trying to look purposeful. That was easy.

  Lovemaking was different now. Orgasms with Jess—not at first, but lately—felt as if they were in the exact center of me. As if, before, they all were slightly askew, off middle, but now they were exactly where they were supposed to be. Could that possibly be literally true? Probably not. More likely my body was trying to tell me something. It was making an analogy.

  I kept a picture of Stephen on the far bedside table, Jess’s side of the bed. He had it propped on his chest when I came back from the bathroom. The photo flattered Stephen, made him look loose and fun loving, shading his eyes from the full sun, his teeth showing in a tight, rare grin. Jess lifted his eyes from the picture to me, and I waited for what he would say. He lay with the sheet twisted between his legs, rumpled and rangy, at ease with everything, and I thought how different they were, the two men in my life. Once Ruth came home from a visit with Jess, talking about who she’d rather marry, a man who felt things or a man who thought things. An oversimplified distinction, but I knew whom she was comparing. Women wanted both, of course, but we were usually drawn toward one more than the other. My mother chose a thinking man because she thought he would be safer. And I guess he was.

  I lay down beside Jess. He put the picture back and took my hand without saying anything. I talked more than he did. I had with Stephen, too, but that was different. Jess’s silences were safe, intriguing, not indifferent, never dangerous. He was like a—a thermometer, something with mercury in it; my symbol for him in my mind was a tall blue column, upright, running the length of him, and all for me. Jess was true-blue.

  “You never ask me about Stephen,” I said, draping an arm across his stomach.

  “Tell me anything you want.”

  “Don’t you want to know anything?”

  He thought. “Me being here—what’s it like? I’ve got my head on his pillow.”

  “I know. I know, I’ve been feeling guilty because I don’t feel guilty. Enough. I didn’t wait long enough, most people would say. In a way, I’ve been unfaithful to Stephen twice. With you. Once when he was alive, and now.”

  Jess brushed the back of my hand across his lips, watching me.

  “Do you want to know why I married him? One reason?” He nodded, but he didn’t have the same compulsion that I had to confess, thrash out, make sense of. “I knew what I’d be getting into. He’d be a college professor, and that was certainly a life I understood, but with Stephen I’d really belong, I’d be his equal.” Not like my mother, who had never belonged. “I would be an artist and he’d be a genius. And we’d have perfect children.”

  “And that’s why you loved him?”

  “That’s why I married him. I fell in love with him because I thought he was someone else. Or maybe he was someone else and he changed. Or I changed.”

  “Who did you think he was?”

  “Somebody like you. But safer.” This was a hard confession. “I was twenty-three when we met, living in Washington, trying to be an artist. Failing. I’d run completely out of money, and I was down to two choices, get a job or go back to school. The end of my life, I thought. And either one meant caving in to my mother, who always said I should get an education degree and teach art in the public schools. Stephen and I weren’t dating anyone but each other, but it wasn’t that serious yet. When he finally understood my predicament and what it meant to me, he said—he said, ‘Come live with me, and be my love.’ In those very words. I guess it sounds silly, but it meant the world to me. His first and his last poetic utterance. He was offering to save me, and he had no motive except generosity. I thought he was like that. I thought…I didn’t know that this was…uncharacteristic. So I fell in love with him.”

  “And then?”

  “Oh…we moved in together, but it didn’t save me. We fell into marriage, too quickly, and then Ruth was born, and life turned very practical. No more poetry, no more art. Crafts—for money, I started making wreaths and selling them, wreaths for all occasions. Then I made wreath kits, and they did pretty well until I got sick of them. Literally. My first depressive period. Is this much, much more than you ever wanted to know?”

  “I don’t think we can save each other,” Jess said.

  “No. But—you don’t think you saved me?” He smiled. “No, I know,” I said, “but it feels that way to me.”

  He began to put his tongue in the spaces between my fingers. “If I didn’t exist, if I disappeared, you’d be all right.”

  “Oh, no.” I kept saying no, but it occurred to me that I had changed, and that I would be stronger if I lost Jess than I had been when I lost Stephen. Where was the sense in that? “The sheepdog factor,” I realized. “You’re saying it’s the work. Well, I don’t know. I still think it’s you.” I rubbed against him, pressing kisses on his throat, under his ear. Two months of ark building had made his hands even more rough and jagged, and I liked the feel of them coasting over my skin, pinkening it, arousing me. “Let’s not talk about our spouses anymore, not for a while. Let’s have a moratorium.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t sound so reluctant.” We began to make love again. Slowly this time, not so frantic. At the moment when I began to shudder and spiral up, Jess paused, and I heard it, too—a familiar sound. The squeak of a footstep on the staircase.

  I twisted up, fast as a snake, and raced to the closed door, which had no lock. “Hello?” Ruth called from the hall.

  “Don’t come in.” The door knob turned. “Ruth, don’t open the door.”

  “Why? Mom? Who’s there?”

  My bathrobe lay on the floor at the foot of the bed, but I was afraid to move. Jess rolled off the bed, snatched up the robe, and threw it at me. “I’m coming out,” I said, shoving my arms inside the sleeves, yanking at the belt. He’d gone around to the other side of the bed, invisible from the door. I tried to smile—Sorry—can you believe this?—but it came out a grimace. He pushed his hair back with his hands, baring his teeth in comical sympathy, and just for a second it calmed me. Just for a second I wasn’t sorry. I opened the door.

  Ruth looked white and ill. “Are you all right?” In a reflex, I put out my hand, but she flinched away, out of reach.

&n
bsp; “Who is it?” she whispered. Fear made her sharp features stiff, like carved wax. Oh, Jesus—she thought it was Stephen. I could see it in the frightened, irrational longing in her eyes.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, “let’s go in your room.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jess.”

  Incomprehension. Then a split second of relief—oh, Jess, well, then—and finally, understanding.

  My chest hurt. “Oh, baby.” I saw clearly and for the first time that I’d picked the most heartless thing, the worst way to hurt her. She backed up, her mouth open but no words coming out. I followed because I thought she was bolting for the stairs, but she dashed past them and into her room, slamming the door in my face.

  Jess, half-dressed, took me by my ice-cold hands and pulled me back into the bedroom. I could hardly feel his arms around me. “Let me stay,” he said, but I said no, go, he had to go. He hugged me tighter, even when I tried to push him away. In spite of myself a little warmth began to seep in. I rested my head on his shoulder. “What have I done? I don’t mean that, I’m not sorry—but if you’d seen her face—oh God, Jess, I don’t think I can fix this. You have to go, please, I can’t talk to her, I can’t do anything until you leave.”

  But after he was gone, it was worse. What if this was unmendable? My fingers were shaky when I tried to button my blouse; I put a sweater on over it, I put my shoes on—trying to look dressed, I realized. I was afraid to look in the mirror. Stop, I thought, but I could feel it coming on, the old contempt for myself. No, a B-movie situation, that’s all this was. I’d explain everything to Ruth and—it would break her heart. But she’d recover, and afterward at least there would be no more secrets. But that was a good outcome for me: what about this dreadful situation could ever be good for her?