Claire’s family doesn’t look like the one in her dollhouse (boy in police custody; mother eating lobster naked with her boyfriend, on the verge of losing her job for sexual misconduct charges). But they are a family, all right. They are even, in their twisted, dysfunctional, damaged, beat-up way, a reasonably happy one.
Even though it’s usually Claire who calls Mickey—and in the four days that have passed since the night of Bev’s visit she hasn’t—Claire knew that Mickey was going to call her eventually. This morning he does.
“Okay, Slim,” he says. “Who died?”
“Everybody’s fine here, Mickey,” says Claire. Her voice is flat. She doesn’t reach for coffee this time. He will know from the sound of her that something’s wrong.
“Let’s see,” he says. “I know for a fact I didn’t give you the clap. I’m not taking you to court to win custody of your kids, because I’d rather play for the Chicago Cubs, if you must know the truth. I haven’t told you lately that you always sing almost a half-step flat, and I am not about to tell you The Bridges of Madison County was the most moving reading experience I ever had. I give up. What did I do?”
“I don’t really feel like talking to you this morning, Mickey,” she says. “I’m pretty busy. Halloween and all.”
“That bad, huh, Slim?” he says. “Okay. Have it your way. Call me when you feel like it.”
She feels like it many times. But she never does. Ever again. And the interesting thing is, neither does he. It’s over as simply as that.
The board of directors of the Blue Hills Children’s Museum has called a special meeting today. Normally Claire would be present for such a meeting, but because the issue at hand is certain allegations made against her by Ursula’s mother, Joan Vine, Vivian has explained that she will have to be excluded from the discussion. “You know we all love you to death,” Vivian told her when she called this morning to explain the situation. “But in an organization of this nature, with people entrusting their children to us, we just can’t be too careful about the type of individual we have on staff. I know I don’t have to explain to you why the least sign of impropriety could open such a can of worms.”
So Claire has the day off, and since it’s Halloween, she has spent the afternoon carving jack-o’-lanterns with Pete and Sally to keep her mind off other things. Like what she will do for money if she loses her job at the museum, for instance. And how she is going to tell Tim she can’t see him anymore.
It’s five o’clock now, and she still hasn’t got a call from Vivian. The pumpkins sit along the front porch railing, candles flickering. The birch branches and the ghostly scarecrow figure hanging from the noose cast long, eery shadows on the sidewalk as the last of daylight disappears. That organ music is playing again and the portable fan has been turned on. “I have to hand it to you, Pete,” Sally tells her brother—actually putting an arm around his shoulders. “This is the most amazing scene you ever built. The trick-or-treaters are going to go nuts.”
Because she has been feeling sick and crampy all day—the aftereffects of the miscarriage, combined with her terrible anxiety about her job—Claire didn’t have time to put a costume together. So she has dressed up in her Pioneer Woman outfit to pass out the candy. She adjusts her mop cap and checks her face in the mirror just as the first trick-or-treater arrives. A Power Ranger.
He scoops up a handful of candy corn and Hershey kisses. He’s followed by Pippi Longstocking, the Little Mermaid, and two more Power Rangers. Next comes a young couple with two very young children. The youngest one, a toddler, wears a home-sewn pumpkin suit whose pattern Claire noticed in Redbook this month. The older one, who looks to be around four years old, wears an even more elaborate home-sewn outfit. She’s a bunch of grapes.
Claire remembers the days when she sewed outfits like that. The year Pete was three she worked for a full week making him a dragon suit. Just before they went trick-or-treating, Pete burst into tears and said the fabric felt scratchy. At the last minute she dressed him in a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and Sam’s old number from the Boston Marathon pinned to the front.
All the crazy, pointless efforts people make, Claire thinks. Trying to make life perfect for their children. Who are we kidding?
These days, of course, Pete would die before he’d let her go trick-or-treating with him and his friends. He and Jared are hoboes this year, in costumes they threw together themselves in ten minutes. Who knows where Sally is?
So many trick-or-treaters are stopping by, Claire doesn’t even try to close the door and sit down in between knocks. She just stands on the front porch with her bowlful of candy as they parade past. The little ones with parents hanging back proudly on the sidewalk, so eager to shield and protect. The older ones, whose parents have long since recognized the impossibility of keeping the ghosts at bay and checking every apple for razor blades.
A trio of figures approaches—two short, one tall. The larger figure stands in the shadows of Pete’s display while the two smaller ones mount the steps of Claire’s porch, their hands outstretched. One is dressed like a hooker, Claire thinks, although when she asks the girl who she’s supposed to be, the child says Barbie. She’s wearing a pink feather boa just like one Claire has up in her bedroom somewhere.
The other child is a witch. She wears a black wig and her face is covered with green makeup. Only when she says “Trick or treat” does Claire realize it’s Ursula. The figure in the shadows is Tim, of course. He hasn’t said anything.
“My goodness,” Claire says. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
“Heh, heh, heh, my little pretty,” says Ursula.
Tim approaches her now. “You look beautiful,” he whispers. She kisses his cheek.
“How do you feel?” he asks her. She called to tell him about the miscarriage. The one time they have spoken in days.
“I’m okay,” she says. “I’ll stop by later after the trick-or-treaters go home.”
“I love you,” he says softly. His tone as he tells her this no longer holds out hopefulness or joy.
“I know,” she says. Another band of trick-or-treaters is mounting the steps. The witch scoops a handful of candy corn into her bag and disappears down the street.
At nine-thirty Vivian finally calls her. “I have to be totally frank with you,” she says. “It was a tough meeting. That woman shared some pretty damaging allegations with us, and a number of members of the board took the position that we couldn’t risk the exposure, keeping you on. But enough of us went to bat for you that the board voted to keep you on in a probationary status. So long as no further allegations arise, naturally.”
Claire knows she should be grateful and penitent. But all she can do at the moment is say something about needing to hand out some more trick-or-treat candy.
Midnight now, her children finally in bed and the candles burned down, Claire heads to Tim’s apartment. She makes her way down the street littered with smashed pumpkins and trailing rolls of toilet paper, knowing this will be the last time.
He’s waiting for her in the living room of his sad, fishy-smelling apartment house. In the light of a single naked bulb, his face looks different to her than before. He has the face of a ruined man. A man she will leave, has left already. A man whose heart she will break.
“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. They are both past tears.
“How did I manage to screw things up so badly?” he says, “I only wanted to love you.”
Claire puts her arms around Tim and presses herself against his big, solid body. For the first time since she has known Tim, his cock is not hard for her. It’s as if Tim has withdrawn permission from his own body to want her anymore.
“I think Ursula and I should leave this town,” he says. She knew this was coming. “I know you don’t want to see me anymore, and without you I can’t bear to stay.”
Her finger strokes his hand. She touches his hair. The gestures of a mother, not a lover.
“Can you come to bed with
me?” she asks him.
He can never say no to her. He watches Claire undress the way Ursula would watch the unveiling of the most perfect doll anybody could ever give her, only it isn’t being given to her, actually. Only shown. She unfastens her bra and lets her breasts tumble down over his face. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair.
He raises his head from the pillow to meet her nipple—first one, then the other, with the same wild, desperate foraging of an infant left without milk for longer than Claire would ever leave any infant of hers.
“Will you ever know how much I loved you?” he says.
He speaks in the past tense, she knows, not because he has stopped loving her. He speaks in the past tense as if he were a dead man. If dead men could speak.
Ursula wakes even earlier than usual this morning, so early that her father is still sleeping. Alone.
She finds a sweatshirt and sweatpants in the pile on her floor, also her Little Mermaid backpack. Into it she packs Phillip, a set of smell markers, her Bend ’N Stretch Barbie, Jenny’s collar, her Halloween candy, and the shell her mother gave her that time. She fastens on her bicycle helmet and tiptoes down the stairs. She lifts the kickstand of her two-wheeler and settles onto the seat. She doesn’t know where she’s going, except that it will be away from here. She pedals fast as the wind.
Sally isn’t pregnant after all. Not anymore, anyway. She checks the color key on the back of the home pregnancy test she finally administered and rereads the directions twice to be sure she’s read them right. White circle: no pregnancy. She’s free. Within half an hour of taking the test she has begun to bleed.
She would call somebody up and tell them, but the only one who ever knew in the first place was Travis and he’s been acting so weird he’d probably be disappointed. She has to do something though. She wants to dance. She wants to run. Most of all she just wants to get out of here.
Just at this moment Travis sails up on his skateboard. Last time he saw her, when he showed her his tattoo, she was in such a terrible mood, but seeing him now, with his arms outstretched and his hair flying and all four wheels in midair, she can’t help but be moved by him. She grabs his shoulders in both her hands and whirls around in a circle with him. “Let’s drive someplace,” she says.
They take her mother’s car and head for Wilson’s Dam, out behind the old reservoir. Sally drives. He has brought her the new Dead Milkmen tape. He is just so happy Sally isn’t mad at him anymore. He feels sad about the baby. But mainly he just has to touch her again.
Sally is so grateful she isn’t pregnant, nothing else matters. I won’t ask for anything ever again, she is thinking. I’m so lucky.
“Hey, why don’t you keep both hands on the wheel and let me take the wrapper off?” Travis tells her, reaching for the tape. “You know how much shit you’d get in if somebody caught you driving with no adult in the car and no license? Me too.”
He removes the wrapper from the tape and sticks it in the cassette player. He puts his hand up inside the front of Sally’s short shorts. He begins to nuzzle against her neck.
“Hey,” says Sally. “Not now, okay?” She hasn’t figured out how to tell Travis yet but she isn’t going to do it with him anymore.
“Man, you don’t know how bad I missed you,” he says. “All morning when I was bagging groceries, all I could think of was what I’d do if you wouldn’t see me anymore. I’d go crazy. I don’t know what you did to me. I still got a brain and a liver and intestines and stuff, but it’s like my dick rules. And you rule my dick.”
“I’ve been thinking about the sex part, too, Travis,” Sally tells him. “I mean, I like you so much and we have all these great times and everything. But I’ve been thinking I shouldn’t have rushed the other so quick. I want to take it slower.”
“I will, I promise,” he says. He figures she’s talking about this foreplay stuff Adam was telling him about. “I’ve been a jerk. I’m always so fucking anxious to get it off, I sometimes forget how it is for you.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” says Sally. “I meant sex in general. Slowing down.”
“Not doing it anymore?” he says. “You gotta be kidding. I’d die.”
“Either that or you could just find somebody else and get laid by her,” says Sally. “There’s probably lots that would be happy to do it with you.” She hopes she sounds a little sad but the truth is it would be a relief. She thinks about doing things like lying on the hammock and reading Agatha Christie mysteries. Sewing. Dancing. Going for bike rides with her friends. Why was she in such a hurry to get on to the next step?
“I thought we’d be together always,” Travis says to her. “I didn’t picture us ever breaking up.”
“Are you still onto that marriage weirdness?” says Sally. Now she isn’t even sorry at all anymore. She’s almost mad, that he could be so dumb. “Jesus, I’m not even sixteen years old.”
“You don’t know how much I love you, Sally,” Travis tells her. “I want to be with you forever.”
“We just screwed a few times is all,” she says. “No big deal.”
“It was to me,” he says. “It is to me.”
“Listen,” she says. “I think maybe I’d better just go home now. I’m not in the mood to go to the dam with you at the moment and you probably aren’t, either.” She begins to pull a U-turn on the narrow dirt road that leads up to the dam.
Travis grabs her arm. “Don’t go,” he says. The car swerves back out across the road. Sally turns the wheel again, points it toward home.
“Sally,” he cries. “I want to show you how I feel about you. It’s like my whole self is exploding.” He reaches for the wheel again, but she fights him off this time. The car jerks to the left. Sally sees a VW bug heading in their direction. “Travis,” she yells. “Stop it!” Their car is pointed straight for the bug.
“Jesus!” Travis screams. Sally swerves wildly to avoid the other car. She means to hit the brake, but her foot slams down on the accelerator instead. They careen over the guardrail of the bridge and into the water.
Claire is already at the hospital when Sam arrives, straight from his building job. For once, seeing him, she doesn’t think about slammed doors or dinners poured down the garbage disposal or lawyers’ bills and child support. She actually forgets for a second who he is to her now except for what she can’t ever forget, that he is the father of their daughter, who lies on a table somewhere on the other side of the double doors at the far end of this room, where she has been for over an hour now without anybody saying what’s going on.
She puts her arms around him; he doesn’t resist. “It took an hour just to get the two of them out of the car once they pulled them out of the water. There was an inch or so of airspace or they would have drowned,” she tells him. “Sally was driving, God knows why.”
Sam can’t speak. “What—” he begins.
“Her arm is broken. Also a couple of ribs,” Claire tells him. The easy part. “They’re still checking her for internal injuries.”
Even now, in the terrible fluorescent light of the waiting room, Claire can’t help thinking what an astonishingly handsome man he is, this familiar and elusive stranger who is her children’s father. In all the years she’s known him—half her lifetime, practically—she has never before seen him weep. They weep together, actually: wild, heaving sobs in each other’s arms. She pounds her hands against his back. He buries his head against her breasts. Crazily, the words come to her now that she said to him last time he picked the children up: “How many times do I have to ask you to please wait on the porch?” If he laid his head against her her lap she wouldn’t push him away.
As abruptly as they fall against each other, they break apart.
“When are they going to know something?” he asks.
She shakes her head. They don’t explain the rules here, you just wait for somebody in a green tunic to call your name. Two hours ago Claire had certain other hopes and dreams, though she’s at a loss to say
what they might have been. Her universe now is the waiting area outside the emergency room. All she wants out of life now is a doctor to come and tell her Sally will be okay.
One emerges, with a couple Claire realizes must be Travis’s parents. She’s suddenly ashamed that she’d forgotten about him. One look at Eleanor Goforth and she knows it can’t be good. Her husband—Don? Dave?—looks blank and stricken.
She would go up to them, only they have nothing to offer each other right now, except the mutual wish that their children had never laid eyes on each other. The doctor is writing down something for them on a piece of paper. Another woman has joined them—not a doctor; not dressed like one, anyway. She has an arm around Eleanor’s shoulder and a hand on Dave’s arm. It is Dave. She leads them into an elevator.
“Any word on Sally yet?” Claire asks the doctor. He says the broken arm has been set and it looks like there weren’t any serious internal injuries. “You and your husband can go in to see her in just a few moments,” he says.
“How about Travis?” Claire asks him.
“He’s lucky he’s alive, the way he hit the windshield. Another half-inch and we’d be looking at a broken neck,” he says. Claire feels her body relax slightly.
“As it is, he’s got two broken legs, multiple fractures,” he tells them. “The fracture to the left leg is relatively simple. The problem is, the boy has a compound fracture to his right femur and a smashed kneecap. It’s too early to tell yet if we can save the kneecap, but we’re definitely looking at severe limitation to motion in the right hip and knee, combined with the possibility of sciatic nerve injury and severe chronic pain, long-term. He’ll be in traction twelve to sixteen weeks. After that we’ll know better what we’re going to be dealing with.”
Who knows how long Claire stands there then? At some point Tim comes rushing into the emergency room, dragging Ursula behind him. He lurches toward Claire and throws his arms around her so tightly he knocks the wind out of her, then pulls back. He’s like some prisoner in the visiting room of a jail, looking at her through the glass but forbidden to touch her.
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