by Debra Dean
The light changed, and they drove through downtown. At night, it looked like a scene from a science fiction movie, silent and swept clean of humanity. The wide streets were deserted, traffic signals washing the empty pavement green, then yellow, then red. Warning lights winked from the tops of dark office towers, all jutting mirrored surfaces. A few squat buildings remained from the days when this was still a bedroom community. The old 76 filling station on the northeast corner was a video store now, its fluorescent interior spilling white light onto a row of empty parking spaces. Kitty-corner from the filling station was the Eastlake Savings and Loan where they’d taken out the loan for the second house; it was now a branch of one of the big interstates, but it looked more or less the same, smaller against the backdrop of high-rises.
Elaine finally relented. “The kids told me about Nicole. I’m sorry.” The funny thing was, she truly was sorry. She could remember predicting bitterly that he would someday realize what a flimsy piece of packaging he’d traded her in for, all spandex and peroxide, but now that she’d been proven right, it gave her no pleasure.
“Did they tell you she’s suing me for support?”
“Can she do that?”
“Nothing to stop her from trying, I guess.” He shook his head, with a kind of rueful bewilderment. “No fool like an old fool, right?” He seemed to be actually asking her the question.
“Do you want me to contradict you?”
“Well, you could tell me I’m not so old.” He smiled wooingly.
In spite of herself, she smiled back. “Face facts, Neil. You’re an old goat.”
Somehow that satisfied him. He nodded, oddly pleased.
“Do you remember what we paid for the house on Phinney?” he asked.
“Thirty-seven thousand.”
“I drove by there last month. It’s on the market. Just out of curiosity, I called up the realtor. They were asking three twenty for it.”
“You’re joking.” She was continually shocked by how fast things changed.
“That was a cute little house.”
It had been the first of three houses, just four doll-sized rooms but with a wide covered porch and an old maple that shaded their bedroom with dancing green light. Darcy had been conceived in that room, and then slept in the bottom drawer of the dresser because there was no space for a crib. They would throw impromptu parties, half a dozen interns and their wives or girlfriends drinking sangria and dancing in the yard. Elaine felt a dull pang in her chest, something like grief for her child-husband and her younger self, the two of them bumbling and careless and, for a long while, lucky.
She passed the high school and the park and the Methodist church and then turned right into the neighborhood where Neil lived now. She found his driveway and left the engine running.
“Have you had dinner?” he asked.
“It’s after eleven,” she said, as if this were an answer. In truth, she rarely sat down to a meal, just threw one of those little frozen pizzas in the microwave or nibbled at whatever was handy. It was a holdover from being married to a doctor. When the kids were little, she had fought to keep their dinnertimes regular, but it often meant she had cooked dinner in two shifts and picked in between.
“Well, how about a glass of wine or something?”
“I’ve got to get home and get this stuff in the fridge.”
“You can put it in mine. I hate eating alone,” he added.
She was curious.
The extra house key was hidden under a pot next to the back door, exactly where anyone would look first. They entered the kitchen through the back door, and when Neil flipped on the lights, Elaine blinked in the sudden glare. Every surface gleamed antiseptically under bright fixtures: an enormous stainless-steel gas range, a matching Sub-Zero refrigerator, double steel sinks deep enough to bathe a large dog in, frosted glass cabinets with metal pulls. What had surely been touted as modern and functional instead screamed “operating arena.” Elaine could almost picture patients being prepped on the granite slab countertop of the island. He could bring his work home.
“Wow,” she said stupidly.
“Do you like it?” he asked, and she was surprised to see that he wanted her approval.
“It’s pretty impressive,” she nodded.
“I’ve gotten into cooking,” he said. “Mostly stir-fry and grilling, but I make my own marinades.” He had the doors of the behemoth Sub-Zero opened wide and was unloading his groceries.
“Better get that ice cream in the freezer,” he said, taking her grocery bag.
“I changed my mind on the ice cream. Just milk.” He looked pleased.
“So, what do you say to some sautéed chicken breast, maybe a little pasta?”
“Really, just a glass of wine is fine. I can’t stay long. I spent the day helping my mom pack up her house and I need a shower. I’m pretty filthy.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” He grinned, but then quickly added, “You look great, Elaine. Really.” He smiled. This was new, a carefulness with her feelings that she wouldn’t have credited him with.
“Here, sit.” He gestured to a bar stool on the far side of the island. “Pinot grigio okay? I’ll make a little extra chicken. Once you smell the garlic, you’ll change your mind. So Polly’s moving?”
She sat back with her glass of wine and watched as he piled ingredients onto the countertop, pulled down a sauté pan and pasta pot from the overhead rack, and set the water on to boil. A few sips of wine and the tightness she’d been feeling all day began to unravel.
“She’s on a tear. You remember her china? Blue rims with little birds and berries?” But no, of course he wouldn’t. “Sixteen place settings of Haviland and she was ready to haul it off to Goodwill.”
Neil selected a chef’s knife from a butcher block and began expertly mincing garlic. “Did you take it off her hands?”
“I’m putting it in storage. Darcy may want it when she gets settled.”
He smiled good-naturedly. “Don’t hold your breath, Elaine.” Their daughter was living with a bunch of people in a farmhouse outside of Eugene, Oregon. She had spent the previous year living in trees for their own protection. It was their daughter’s form of rebellion to actually live out the ideals of the sixties, in contrast to her parents who had merely smoked a little pot and feigned the styles.
“Well, tomorrow’s the last day, then we’re done. Except for the sideboard. I have to find some movers to take it to my house.” She felt self-conscious when she referred to the house as hers. “You can’t believe the estimates I’ve been getting just to haul one sideboard and a couple of chairs across town.”
“Do you need a hand?” he asked. “Michael and I could rent a truck.”
She answered reflexively. “Oh, no, I’ll figure something out.”
“I have to rent something to drive anyway. Might as well be a truck. I could pick it up in the morning, swing by Polly’s after I stop at the police station.” Neil was reaching for the phone, pressing a number on the speed dial. “I’ll give Michael a call, see if he’s free.”
“It’s almost midnight. Really, this isn’t…”
“It’s Saturday night. What do you think, I’m going to wake him up?” He wedged the phone between his shoulder and ear, and sliced the chicken breast into strips as he talked. “Hey. It’s your old man.” He was talking to Michael’s voice mail. “If you’re not doing anything in the morning, I could use your help. Someone made off with my car, and I promised your mother we’d help her move some furniture from Polly’s. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. I’ll be up for a while. Give me a call.”
It was Neil’s habit to lowball the time involved in doing anything. He never allowed for traffic or missed turns, for checkout lines or the myriad of obstacles that could spring up. He saw only the unimpeded flow of his will. She, in turn, had always overcompensated by anticipating every roadblock. Right now, for instance, she could imagine with perfect clarity the phone call she’d get tomorr
ow: Neil explaining that he’d been held up by mysterious forces, the rental car agency that had rented every truck off the lot before his arrival, the desk sergeant who needed more paperwork filled out. Of course, it would only be a few more minutes and then he’d be on his way. Fifteen minutes, tops.
She knew him better than he knew himself. She could predict what he would order off a menu. She knew his habits and secret vanities, the way he squinted when he looked in the mirror, the way he could disappear into a project and not hear what was around him, not the babies crying, or later, the boom boxes thumping in the upstairs bedrooms. She knew the kind of jokes that made him laugh, the strangled cry he made when he climaxed, how he was always a little sheepish afterward.
She let the last swallow of wine roll around in her mouth and slide warmly down her throat.
He was the same man, and yet he wasn’t. The entire time they’d been married, he’d never made anything more complicated than a sandwich, and here he was, testing a strand of pasta from the pot, sifting chopped basil and pine nuts over the chicken. She wondered how else he had changed.
The food was good. She had another glass of wine, and she talked about her mother’s defection to North Carolina, and he talked about a trip he’d recently taken to Phoenix for a convention that had been heavily attended only because it was February and Phoenix was warm in February. They exchanged opinions about Michael’s new girlfriend and agreed that this one seemed good for him, not like the last one. And they reminisced, like old friends who haven’t seen each other in years. He had forgotten, until she mentioned it, the three months his crazy aunt lived with them. Poor thing, she really was crazy, not just an expression. They shouldn’t laugh, but did he remember how they found the coffee can half-full of pee under her bed? And Daisy, the pet goat. What had they been thinking? The constant bleating and the damn thing ate a thousand dollars’ worth of landscaping before they’d found a home for it.
Was it Banff where they’d cooked up the idea of getting a little dairy goat? It was that old man, the caretaker, and his stories about the health benefits of goat’s milk. He would come by the cabin on some pretext, always in the late afternoons, and hang around telling them yarns about cougars and grizzlies until Neil invited him to stay for dinner. What a character. The trip had ended badly, though. They had been there a little less than five days when Michael found a yellow jacket nest.
“You remember? He swelled up like one of those balloons in the Macy’s parade.” Neil shook his head in wonder.
One minute Michael had been screaming and the next he was turning blue. Elaine would never forget how calm Neil had been when he told her to hold the boy still while he punctured his throat. He needs air, Neil had said. She had screamed at him, called him a bastard and who knows what else, all the while desperately trying to wrench her baby away from him.
“Man, you were a she-cat,” Neil laughed.
Elaine smiled, but the memory filled her with shame. “I didn’t trust you,” she admitted.
He stopped and looked at her and took this in, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “I would never have let anything happen to Michael.”
She nodded. “I know. Nevertheless.”
Every day of their marriage, patients had turned their lives over to Neil. He had split them open at the sternum, taken hold of their beating hearts, and they had adored him for it. She had envied them their faith, the look she had seen in their eyes when they introduced themselves later in a restaurant or a store. “Your husband is an amazing man,” they’d say. “But I guess you know that.”
Tears sprang up in her eyes and she pressed them back with her fingers, shaking her head at her foolishness.
“When we split up, I realized I’d been bracing for it for years,” she said. “When Jody and Hal separated. And then Kris Little, the Dali guy that used to work at the gallery. He dragged himself around like a dog that’s been hit and left in the road. And I was thinking, when the time comes…I don’t know what I was thinking, not that it wouldn’t happen to us but that I was going to manage it better.” She closed her eyes and exhaled jaggedly. “I mean, I loved you, but I just held a little in reserve, you know?”
He reached over and tentatively rested a hand on her back. He stroked her hair, smoothed the back of her neck. “I loved you, too.” His voice was soft and hoarse.
The moment was suddenly taut. His hand slowed, feathering across her skin, leaving trails of heat. Elaine felt herself suspended from a great height and she willed herself to fall.
And then they were kissing. Their mouths and their hands remembered. He squeezed her hand and pulled her to her feet. She followed him through a dark, high-ceilinged living room and up an open staircase with cable railings like a ship’s, and she had the sensation of being at sea, the taste of salt, a swaying unsteadiness in the rolling dark.
A phone was ringing in the dark and then the voice of her husband was speaking to someone, something about a car. For a long, reeling moment, she panicked, seeing the crumpled bodies of her children smashed against a windshield. Neil’s voice was measured, no hint of alarm.
“Is it the kids?” she breathed.
“What?” He had hung up the phone. “Oh, yeah, probably a bunch of kids out for a joyride.” He switched on a reading lamp and swung out of bed. “They didn’t get far. The cops found it in the high school parking lot. The front left fender is banged up pretty good.”
His car. The world righted itself again, and she found herself in an unfamiliar bed. The sheets smelled of bleach. Neil was pulling on shorts and jeans and socks.
“I’m just going to walk over and get it,” he said.
“Now?” It was late, still dark outside.
“I don’t want it towed unless it’s necessary, and I hate to leave it sitting there. Go back to sleep.” He leaned over and brushed his lips across her eyelids and her mouth. She felt her nipples harden against the starchy sheets and wondered idly if she should be feeling something else. And then he was gone. She heard a door somewhere in the house bump shut.
It was quiet, just the electric hum of a suburban night, but she couldn’t sleep. She saw that her clothes were strewn across the flat expanse of carpet in a trail leading to the bed. The bedroom had the same elegant blankness as a hotel suite, right down to the big television screen recessed into the far wall. Below and on either side of the TV, barely visible seams outlined what must be drawers and closet doors. She got out of bed, lurching just a little as she stood. She was pleasantly woozy with sleep or wine. There were no latches or door handles, so she began bumping the wall in different spots with the palm of her hand. She listened. Nothing. And again, nothing. It was like being a safe cracker—she could be in one of those sixties caper movies. She wasn’t aware of looking for anything in particular. A cabinet door clicked open. Inside were shelves with stereo equipment, drawers of CDs and videotapes. In the dim light, she made out titles of exercise videos and several recent movies. She recognized Neil’s hand in the selection of music, mostly CDs he had taken with him when he moved out. He had stopped paying attention to music after college, and so his tastes were frozen back in the Monterey and Motown period. When he’d hum tunes around the house or sing in the shower, it was always thirty-year-old songs and he’d make up his own words. She wondered if Nicole had even known he was changing the lyrics or if she thought there really were Dylan songs called “Mr. Tangerine Man” and “Knockers on Heaven’s Door,” if she thought the Beatles sang “When I’m Six-Foot-Four.” She wondered if he’d put on Al Green when they made love.
Another click and a closet presented itself. She walked inside and found a light switch. The closet was organized into a neat geometry of hanging rods and shelves and drawers, like a Mondrian painting if the artist had worked in shirts and shoes instead of oils. She pulled out drawers containing balls of socks and stacks of T-shirts, familiar laundry interspersed with newer items she didn’t recognize. She ran her hand down the row of suits, fingering the shoulders of the j
ackets.
At the end of the row, in the corner, she found women’s clothing, what Nicole had left behind. A backless sundress. A pair of crushed velvet stretch pants. A silky short kimono, black with a purple bleach stain on the sleeve. A couple pairs of jeans, a striped boatneck sweater. A pink T-shirt that said BRAT in glitter across the front.
She stared at the clothing, breathed in the weight of its physical presence. Her mother was wrong about its being just stuff. Years from now, she thought, this is what will tell them how we lived.
She held up the T-shirt and then pulled it over her head, tugging the fabric down over her chest. She squeezed into the velvet stretch pants, wriggling them up over her hips. Then she pulled the kimono off its hanger and put it on. When she turned around and found the mirror on the back of the closet door, she stared for a long time at her image. The woman reflected back was bedraggled, her hair wild with tangles, mascara smeared under her keening eyes. But it was something about the ill-fitting clothes, the garish pink over her loose breasts and the long sweep of the kimono sleeve when she brushed the hair out of her eyes. They transformed her into someone else. Not Nicole. It took a moment before the name fell into place.
She looked like Janis Joplin, better than that, Janis if she’d fallen in love and gotten married and had children, if she’d survived long enough to know that nothing ended the way it does in songs. Come, go, a marriage didn’t dissolve completely: they were still each other’s history, as permanent as ink stains.
Elaine was singing, impersonating Joplin’s guttural rasp. It was exhilarating to bring this howl up from her gut. She let her hair fall back into her face and wailed out lyrics she remembered from when she and Neil were young, when giving away your heart had seemed like a simple thing to do. She sang another line, then changed the words. Just bake it! Bake another little pizza, you tart, now, baby. Elaine took a sweeping bow. Thank you. Thank you.