A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl

by Jean Thompson

  “Both of you,” Michael said, “died of boredom years ago, but you forgot to drop dead.”

  They had called the police, and then an ambulance, and Michael had ended up in hospital detox for the first time, but not the last.

  Later he told them he was sorry. He’d told them he didn’t mean any of it. But he’d still said it.

  They were all trying to climb out of it now, the whole saga of active addiction, with its crises and crises revisited. Laura thought that at least they’d gotten through the worst parts. She had her son back, her funny, affectionate son, and for that she was grateful, even if there were still moments that were shadowed with bad memories, times Michael retreated into silence and brooding. If addiction was a disease, as everyone said, no one had yet found a miracle cure.

  It had been made clear to Michael that there were now real limits, and consequences for any backsliding. “Detach with love,” all the counselors drummed into you. So many counselors, so many versions of the same advice, only fitfully useful. Gabe wanted to give Michael a deadline to find his own place. He’d run out of patience with what he called coddling. He was still deeply angry at everything Michael had put them through. Laura didn’t want to yank the rug out from under him. They compromised, agreeing that as long as Michael was making some progress in school and going to therapy and going to meetings, they wouldn’t force the issue. Then they got to argue about what that meant, progress.

  You had to allow young men their freedom, and the space to make mistakes, while molding them into responsible, productive, caring adults. Laura knew all the parenting mantras, thank you very much. But you also had to intervene, as they had, to keep your child from falling (or jumping) off serious cliffs. She was still hopeful that Michael would eventually grow into a more settled life. First he had to survive the catalog of disasters she imagined for him (car crash, overdose, AIDS, homeless addict). “Come on, Mom,” he told her, exasperated at yet another episode of her fretting and cautions. “Don’t tell me you never had any fun. I mean before Dad came along and all fun stopped.”

  “Don’t. I also worked toward a degree and got a job.”

  “And then you lived happily ever after. Sorry. I don’t mean to sound snotty. But quit worrying. I know you won’t, but try.”

  “Don’t start calling substance abuse ‘fun,’ Michael. Really.”

  “I was joking, come on! Sorry! But Jesus, Mom, don’t you ever want more than being overworked, and really pissed off about it?”

  “I am not either of those things. All right, some days I’m overworked.”

  “Nobody said you have to give things up for us.”

  Oh but they did. The whole world did. It was beat into you so many different ways. In spite of a million women’s magazine articles about good career moves, and claiming your own interests and hobbies, and your right to your own sphere. Just try and get away with putting yourself first. Maybe younger women no longer felt such pressures. Maybe they were now free to be selfish. It was something she might ask her own daughter, if they ever accidentally blundered into a real conversation. She said, “Everybody gives up something.” It came out sounding forlorn and melodramatic, which she had not foreseen.

  “Well don’t. Quit it.”

  As if anything was that easy. But at least he cared about her and understood her this much. In ways that her husband seemed incapable of doing. An unhappy thought. She said, “I just want you to be happy.” One of those weak, fallback remarks you could drag out when you didn’t have any good answers.

  “I am happy. Yay. Joy. I want you to be happy too.”

  “I’m happy as long as you keep working your program. Your dad is too.”

  “Let’s not bring him into it.”

  “We both want the best for you.”

  He looked so much like his father. Same sandy hair and sharp, clever features. Why couldn’t they get along better? Had the two of them always hated each other? Why couldn’t people ever do what you wanted them to? Michael said, “This is about money, isn’t it. He thinks I should make more money.”

  No, it was about sobriety, and taking responsibility for your own actions, and making good decisions, and all the other lectures that were such a big drag. Laura felt an unwilling sympathy for her son. No one enjoyed being the object of so much hectoring good advice. She wanted to understand his recklessness, even as it terrified her. In order to love him again she had to love the part of him that was foolish, dangerous, willful. Love that he was impatient with practicalities and long-range projections and niggling doubts, love that he had blown off the stupid vocational tests that came back saying he was suited to be a medical assistant or culinary worker, love that he had no use for what was safe when he might have a chance at something magical and passionate. Drugs had been the wrong way to go about it. He would need to give up on the romance of self-destruction and of excess. And who were you, once you did that?

  She could do it. She could bend and stretch herself into that shape and so understand him, after a fashion. But it had taken a toll on her.

  “Don’t screw up,” she told Michael, and from then on he’d turned it into a joke and said he wouldn’t as long as she didn’t either.

  About her daughter, the intelligent, ironic Grace, Laura’s worries had less to do with how she would function in the world. Grace would manage just fine, once she outgrew living like a student and decided to be a grown-up. She was levelheaded, she had cooly removed herself from the rest of the family when her brother’s troubles had blown up in everyone’s faces. But there was a deep current of dissatisfaction in her that Laura recognized and wished she did not.

  * * *

  Becca was talking about Popeye and his various unpleasant habits. “Acres of porn. He totally polluted the computer. All the different varieties of disgusting stuff. They have them organized so you can shop for them, like on Amazon. You have no idea.”

  “I do have an idea, and I’d rather not dwell on it.”

  “Not to tell tales out of school, but there were requests I was not going to go along with.”

  Laura raised a hand, meaning, Enough. She dug in her purse for her wallet so she could pay her share of the bar tab. “Are you staying or going?” she asked Becca.

  “Going. There’s nobody here.” The bar was crowded with sociable groups of people enjoying themselves. Becca meant nobody who had caught her eye.

  “Do you want to get married again?” Laura asked. “I mean, I guess I thought you didn’t. But I shouldn’t assume.”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I? If I find the right person. That’s been my problem up until now. Settling for less-qualified applicants.” Becca opened her purse and took out a lipstick and slicked it over her mouth without looking in a mirror.

  “I think I’ve outgrown being married. No, it’s not anything tragic. More like, can’t we renegotiate the terms?”

  “Whoa.”

  “People wear out,” Laura said vaguely. “That’s all I mean.”

  They counted their money out and looked around for their server. Laura sighed, and Becca said, “There it is.”

  “There what is?”

  “Your I-have-to-go-home face.”

  “I’m not making a face.”

  “You need a vacation.”

  “I don’t think Gabe can get away.”

  “You and me, then. Alumni association tours of the Holy Land.”

  Laura giggled. “Lucy and Ethel in the Holy Land.”

  “We could dress up like nuns. Trip over a bunch of holy relics.”

  “Get arrested for sacrilege. It’s all so tempting. But it wouldn’t go over big at home.”

  “What if something happened to you, God forbid. They wouldn’t last a week.”

  In fact they would last almost a year.

  Laura began to say that nothing was going to happen to her when her phone chimed, a text coming in. She picked it up, studied it, and then looked up with a different kind of face.

  “It’s my mother,
” she said.

  III. EVELYN

  There was not much of a garden in their new house, the house of their new marriage, and Evelyn wanted to plant some lilacs in the yard.

  Hydrangeas too, and peonies, columbines, lilies. A grape arbor and roses. She had sketched it all out, and begged plants from people who already had their own gardens, so as to keep the costs down. Her husband was not openhanded with money and she wanted to avoid any fuss. They had already spent quite a lot on furnishings, and the mortgage itself, and he still felt aggrieved by that. He made good money and it wasn’t that they couldn’t afford things. She wished he was more generous, but there was no point. Everything was settled now, and she was married.

  Evelyn wanted to get some of the smaller plants into the ground by herself, without waiting for the Negro man who came through the neighborhood with a wheelbarrow full of tools, looking for yard jobs. Andrew was at work and couldn’t object, as he otherwise might. It was March and still chilly. She dressed in trousers and an old pair of boots and a short wool plaid jacket that belonged to Andrew, and tied a scarf underneath her chin, babushka style. She worked a spade into the earth alongside the fence, testing to see how much effort it would take. She thought she could manage. She was four months pregnant. She had been married for two.

  The columbine went in first, as they were a spring plant and needed a head start. Then some of the early lilies, because she knew where she wanted them. By then her back hurt and she was sweating beneath her heavy clothes. The rest would have to wait.

  She took off her boots at the back door so as not to track anything in, and hung Andrew’s jacket in its place in the coat closet, and moved through the downstairs rooms as if she was in a museum, not wanting to disturb anything. She wasn’t yet used to the house and all the things the house contained. Draperies and lamps and rugs, dinner plates, silverware, bed linens, pictures in frames. All that and much more. It was hers now, that is, hers to tend and polish and scour, and she had no idea of how to go about it.

  And a baby on top of everything. She couldn’t stand to think about it.

  Most of the furnishings had been bought new, since there was so much space to fill. Evelyn had nothing to contribute beyond a couple of bookcases and her set of teacups. Andrew brought a set of chairs, his heavy walnut desk, and a chifferobe from the bachelor house he’d lived in. As formidable and challenging as this house seemed to Evelyn, at least she did not have to move into Andrew’s. His rooms were airless, wallpapered in shockingly ugly patterns, salmon pink or spinach green. The boards around the kitchen sink sagged with rot. There were no doors to the rooms, only curtains strung across the openings. He’d eaten most of his meals at his desk in the study, spilling crumbs as he read over his law books.

  Evelyn had only seen the inside of it once, which was quite enough. He’d hurried her in and out, since it was not proper for her to be there before they were married.

  He had not minded, or had not noticed, the shabbiness. But this new house was to be different. Evelyn understood that it was meant as a gift to her, the foundation of their new life. With the house and the marriage and now a child, he was establishing himself, a settled man, a family man who would go out into the world from there. And she would have her place alongside him. It was all coming together in ways no one could have foreseen.

  She changed clothes and lay down to rest, not meaning to fall asleep. But here was Andrew sitting on the side of the bed, patting her shoulder. “Wake up, Little Mother.”

  Evelyn disliked it when he called her that. But rather than say so, she yawned and sat up.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four. I left work a little early.” He was smiling in a way she had come to learn meant that she was supposed to do something, but what? So often it felt as if she had blundered into the middle of a play or a game already in progress, which no one had explained to her.

  “I should see about dinner,” she said, and this was the right thing to say, or one of them, because Andrew said it was still early yet, which meant that in fact it was time for her to go downstairs and hope there was something in the icebox that could be made into a meal.

  But first she went down the hall to the bathroom, closed the door, and sat there on the toilet for a long while.

  Dinner turned out all right, or mostly all right: chicken salad from the leftover bird, peas and carrots, biscuits. The biscuits were scorched on the bottom and the chicken salad was drippy from the jar of pimentos she hadn’t thought to drain. She was still a new enough bride that there could be jokes about such things, although they were wearing thin. Evelyn had to remind him that she’d never claimed she could cook.

  “That’s right. It’s not as if I married you under false pretenses.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like you told me you were a blue-ribbon cook.”

  That was all he’d meant. “No,” Evelyn said. “I wouldn’t say that to anyone.”

  In fact she’d never taken much interest in food, and had only ever eaten enough to get by. These last four years she’d boiled eggs or soup on the hot plate in her room, made meals out of saltines and sardines, or eaten at lunch counters. She couldn’t say she was making much headway yet. She could manage things like pork chops and boiled potatoes, and she made a hamburger casserole with noodles and mushroom soup that usually turned out all right. But she despaired of the fancy creations you saw in the magazines, the pretty layered sandwiches frosted with cream cheese, the ham stuffed and sliced so as to make a pinwheel, the perfect, glossy deviled eggs garnished with paprika and snips of parsley. You could get all the sugar you wanted now, and Andrew had let it be known that he favored meringue pies. Meringue! Where did you even start?

  And now for the first time in her life she was hungry, really hungry. She was past all the throwing-up mornings and now she ate whatever she could quickly get her hands on, mostly sandwiches made of store-bought bread and store-bought jelly. She was going to have to do better.

  Now, watching Andrew scrape the blackened biscuit with a table knife without complaint, she said, “I’m sorry. I haven’t figured out how to keep the oven from getting so hot.”

  “Well, that oven’s pretty old. Tricky.”

  He was being kind. She should have been more careful. He was older than she was. He said he’d never expected to marry. He’d had to work so hard to get where he was, taking time off from school to earn money, and then from law school when the war broke out. He’d come back from the army, finished law school, clerked, studied for the bar, passed, practiced law at one of the offices across from the courthouse, then only last year had joined the university’s law faculty as an adjunct. He had a chance to do more teaching if he wished. He loved the university. It was a natural for him. Meanwhile, there was his law practice to keep up. There was no end to the work.

  He had thrown everything into his career. There had been no time for girlfriends, courtship. Anyway, he was not the kind of man who had an easy time with women. He didn’t have the knack for small, agreeable talk and flirting. He was tall and he carried himself with an air of apology for his height. His ears stuck out and undermined the dignity of his features. He had resigned himself to doing without a wife. And here she had come along. He had cast his lot with her, and she with him. He was not yet disappointed in her. She would try harder.

  Evelyn said, “I was thinking, I should get some kind of a cookbook. Study up on it.”

  “Really?” She could tell he was pleased. “I expect there are some good ones out there. I could ask Louise.” Louise was his secretary at the law office, a severe woman who wore old-fashioned hairnets and lace collars. She and Evelyn had only met on one occasion. Louise had looked her over, come to some conclusion, and closed her mouth in a line.

  “Oh no, please don’t. That would be embarrassing. I’ll ask someone at church.” They were members of the Presbyterian congregation downtown, or rather, Andrew was and she now attended with him. She had never given much though
t to religion. But it wasn’t such a hard thing to do, going to church. “I’m sure if I just asked around . . .”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea. Plenty of the ladies there are good cooks. I expect they could point you in the right direction.”

  “I’ll ask next Sunday.” She wondered if she might persuade one or two of them to bring over their chicken divan or cherry pie once in a while. “I’m sorry I never learned that much about cooking. It wasn’t anything I paid attention to, growing up.”

  “Well, you thought you’d be busy with your studies,” Andrew said, and this was true, although it was perhaps uncomfortable to have it set out like that and said out loud, how her life had changed. They both smiled briefly, then returned to eating their watery chicken salad. They did not know each other very well yet.

  They had met last fall when Evelyn attended a concert at the music building. A girlfriend had talked her into it. It was a classical program, nothing she would have gone to on her own. She would rather have gone somewhere with a dance band and, well, someone to dance with. The music building had limestone facings and a grand lobby, and the main recital hall was supposed to have near-perfect acoustics. It was a respectful temple of music, designed to encourage your solemn appreciation. Not that you were likely to hear any music of the toe-tapping sort there.

  Evelyn’s friend said, “I know it’s not your kind of thing, but it’s free. Please? I don’t want to go by myself, I’d feel funny.”

  So Evelyn accompanied her, and listened with half an ear to the concert—was it Brahms?

  She had not paid attention. The violins sawed up and down. A clarinet and piano chased the notes around. It was all very accomplished, she supposed, with its intense musicians and angry-looking conductor, but it did not transport her as it did other people. At least it was a break from the constant pressures of her marginal job.

  The GIs had come back from the war, using their government payments to enroll. The men were being hired, or rehired, for teaching positions and the women were being crowded out. She should not have expected otherwise. She had not been taken seriously; she was a part of the war effort, like a scrap-metal drive. Her three courses a semester went down to two, and they had yet to promise her anything at all for the spring. She decided to work toward a doctorate and persuaded one of the faculty to be her dissertation director. “I don’t understand why you want to get the PhD,” he told her. “You’re not at all bad looking.”