Pause, while Jack frowned and poured himself some red wine.
‘You think people marry without doubts?’
They were sitting at a restaurant table in Berkeley. This was the lunch to mark Donald’s graduation, albeit four months later. Finally! He’d done all kinds of things his aunt and uncle disapproved of. His mother would have torn her hair out if she’d known. Milly’s letters to her sister were always brief, edited versions of the truth. Just the highlights, with some fiction thrown in for good measure. If Louise became worried she might want to reclaim her sons, instead of just sending them birthday and Christmas gifts. (For three years running, she’d sent them each crystals with instructions on their magical properties.) Donald’s father would have…well, Chuck’s reaction was difficult to imagine. In fact, no one remembered him very well any more. An unremarkable man, even his facial features had failed to register in his sons’ memories. Danny said their dad wore wire glasses and smoked a pipe, but Donald swore he did no such thing. Chuck had phoned once or twice and said he might visit if he was passing through Marin, but he never had. No one seemed to mind much.
In the ten years since he left high school, Donald had tended dozens of bars, put his thumb out on hundreds of freeway on-ramps and tried most drugs including heroin once. Married young, divorced young. Primarily, up till now and this English degree, he’d not given Milly and Jack a thing to brag about to their friends. It was a nice restaurant, but no one really wanted to be here. It was a symbolic gesture, and no one could think of much to say. It was only Donald, Jack and Milly. Danny had sent his excuses that morning – a dentist appointment he’d forgotten. Elisabeth was in Mexico volunteering on a clean water project. Sam was living in Santa Barbara with his plump Bible-thumping girlfriend and using his engineering degree to work at Taco Bell. Billy was a sophomore in high school and a quarterback – today he was off with his team to play a game in Eureka. August was only eleven and lived with his mother and new stepdad, in Stockton of all places. Though he did join them for some family occasions.
Donald sighed, looked out the window. His uncle said: ‘Hmph!’ As if he’d just thought of something.
‘Did you get your ring back?’
‘No. But it was her ring, Jack. I mean, she’d bought it. She’d bought both our rings.’
‘Huh.’
Pause.
‘Did she ask for your ring back?’
‘Yeah, Jack. I gave her back the fancy ring.’
‘You could have said you’d lost it.’
‘What?’
Jack poured the rest of the bottle into his glass. ‘Aren’t you drinking anything?’
‘Water. I’m drinking water.’
‘Am I the only one drinking? Christ.’
It had been a bad year for Jack. His glorious new publishing house, Dulcinea Press, was in its second year – it should have been a fantastic year. The IRS letter had been very upsetting, and their audit terrifying. What about the American dream? he’d felt like shouting. Why are you making this difficult, when I’ve lived by the rules (sort of) and am already working my butt off? Where’s my reward? He’d had to find a partner for financial reasons. An intelligent pretty woman, very pert breasts, very wealthy east coast family. He thought he’d been flirting with her, but as it turned out, she’d seduced him, then dumped him like a sack of potatoes. Moved on to his new editor. Plus the Republicans were in again, that greasy Reagan and that racist Bush. The world was going to hell.
‘Where the hell’s Milly?’
‘Bathroom?’ said Donald.
‘Stay single. Best way. Your life’s your own. She’s been too long.’
‘I’ll look for her.’
He found Milly deep in conversation with a waitress in the entrance hall. Her face was animated. When Milly saw her nephew, she said:
‘Donald!’ As if it was an amazing coincidence to see him here, of all places.
She introduced him to the waitress, who eyed him sympathetically.
‘No one wants to marry me either,’ she confided.
‘No? Well, nice to meet you.’
He took Milly’s arm.
‘You don’t get out much, do you Milly?’ he whispered.
‘What, honey?’
It was a long limp back to the table. Donald found himself limping a little in sympathy.
‘Oh, Donald, you are going to have to bite the bullet one day, if you want a family.’
‘Excuse me?’ He could see Jack ordering another bottle in the distance.
‘You’ve had so many girlfriends, nice girls, every one.’
‘Yeah. Wish I could make up my mind.’
‘Silly boy!’ Milly stopped walking, to say this. She waited till he was looking right at her, then said sternly:
‘Don’t you realise, it doesn’t matter who you choose, it just matters that you choose.’
‘That’s bullshit. Sorry, Milly.’
She shrugged off the apology. ‘Like jumping off a bridge into a river.’
‘Sounds like suicide.’
‘I mean a river you can swim in, honey. Scary, and probably freezing. But if you don’t get in there, you’ll end up standing and watching it flow away to the sea without you. You’ll be high and dry!’
‘So you think it’s random. I just have to randomly grab a girl.’
‘Not just any girl. A nice girl. You had a good wife and you threw her away, Donald. That little girl you married adored you like a puppy! And now this fiancée. You give up too easily. Marriage is like a job. You’ve got to put in the hours.’
Donald hated this. He hated this snobby restaurant, he hated his aunt’s advice, he hated his uncle’s assumption that he’d be better off single. Most of all, he hated the fact that in an hour he would be back in his quiet, messy apartment, with the beautiful summer evening empty before him. Since he stopped drinking, beauty just made him want to cry.
‘Oh, Milly,’ he whined. ‘You have no idea what my life is like.’
‘What is your life like?’
Pause.
‘I know,’ she blurted, when he didn’t answer. ‘I know it’s not easy.’
‘My life is fine. I’m fine, okay?’
Jack and Milly drove Donald back to his apartment. He had no car, no job, no money, and now no fiancée. He soaked the full humiliation of sitting in the back while his uncle drove and his aunt asked him if he was still taking vitamin C. The expensive lunch formed a hard bitter ball in his gut.
‘So what’s your plan now?’ asked Jack, rather belatedly as Donald opened the door to get out.
‘I’m going to travel again. I told you.’
‘No you didn’t.’
‘I’m leaving next week. South America.’
An afterthought of kissing Milly – he turned back from his front steps, indicated she should roll down the window, leaned in and kissed her soft cheek. He shook Jack’s hand across her chest.
‘Thanks again. Great lunch. Take care,’ he said.
His voice was heavy with emotion. What kind of emotion was difficult for them to tell. Jack decided Donald sounded defensive. Milly thought he sounded tired, overwrought, like he needed a glass of milk and an early night. Donald had always needed sleep to cope.
‘Bye then,’ said Donald.
‘Goodbye,’ said Jack, looking in the rear-view mirror to check traffic.
‘Be careful, Donald. Write! Phone us anytime!’ called Milly. ‘No hitchhiking!’
‘Yup!’ He mumbled something else, smiled, and then he was walking away, and Jack and Milly were driving in silence.
‘Did you hear that last thing he said, Jack?’
‘Nope.’
‘I think he said he loves us.’
‘Yeah, right.’
Milly remembered the day her sister left. They’d both been hung-over from Jack’s fortieth birthday party. Louise’s voice on the phone from some service station, rushed and nervous:
Got to get away awhile, Billie. Give me a chance, yea
h? Bob’s a good man, but I can’t drag the boys with me this time in case it doesn’t work out. The boys will be better off with you and Jack. I’m crap at everything. I’ll be back one day real soon, I promise. Counting on you sis. This is not about enemas. Or astrology. I love him.
Milly remembered the drive to her sister’s apartment, and gathering up the boys. The grabbing of sweatshirts and pyjamas, T-shirts and jeans. Randomly stuffing them in grocery bags, then pulling the boys out to her car. They’d been twelve and thirteen; small for their age, shorter than Milly. A pair of skinny adolescents with croaky voices and gawky walks. They’d shaken her hand off, politely, proudly, and followed her to the car. They’d known, by then. They had read the note left on the kitchen table. Unbelievably, they were not crying or acting traumatised. At one point they even had an argument about who was going to carry Hammy’s cage. Apparently the hamster belonged to them both.
‘Come on, come on. It’ll be okay,’ she kept repeating. She had left Billy strapped in his car seat all this while, counting on him not waking. Then back home, she ordered pizza and everyone ate it standing up in the kitchen, then later watched Bewitched in silence. All five children had piled on the sofa, Billy sucking his thumb on Elisabeth’s lap. Jack and she had sat in their usual arm chairs, and she remembered him knocking his ashtray to the floor twice, swearing, and she’d scolded him in a whisper. As if everything was normal and swearing was still not allowed. She’d set up two camp cots in Sam’s room with sleeping bags.
Donald wet the bed. In the morning, he apologised to her for spilling a glass of water, but he couldn’t find the glass. Then he accused his big brother of spilling water – Danny was always teasing him. When he realised it was his own urine, his face darkened. She hadn’t been able to decide whether to take the boys to school or not. She had to get Sam and Elisabeth off to school first. In the end, she took her nephews and Billy to the International House of Pancakes, and the boys finished their tall stacks of blueberry pancakes and link sausages and hash browns. They ate as if they were starving, and even giggled when the waitress teased them about playing hooky. High-pitched, girlish giggles.
The boys later asked when they could go home, and she told them she hoped they felt at home in her own house. That she loved them, the whole family did. They shyly reminded her they each had their own room at home. They spoke in a confidential tone, with trust, as if she could arrange for the same privacy. As if she was Samantha Stevens in Bewitched, and could wrinkle her pretty nose and magic two more rooms. It was a three-bedroom house. Elisabeth was the only one with her own room now; Billy was still in his parents’ room.
‘Here’s the plan,’ she said over the maple-syrupy plates. ‘I’ll get bunk beds, and I’ll mark territory in the room. So you’ll each have a bit that’s only yours. It’ll be great. You can give your bit a name, like a country name. Or a football team. And no one will be allowed unless you invite them, right?’
They both stared at her.
‘Who gets to keep Hammy?’
‘You can take turns. I’ll make a rota.’ Still not a minute to think of her sister. Her head had squeezed with not thinking of her. Louise taking that dawn Greyhound heading to Texas, her shabby yellow suitcase in hand, her sons still in their beds.
‘Jack, Jack! Stop the car!’ she commanded now, after a few blocks. The panic had been building up, filling her chest like a liquid.
He slammed on the brakes. The car behind him honked, so did the car behind that car.
‘Jesus, Milly. What is it?’
‘We have to go back.’
‘Goddammit, why?’
‘Something’s wrong. We have to turn around, Jack.’
‘Are you insane? You are insane.’
‘Jack. Please. Please, Jack.’
‘Donald is twenty-seven years old. If he’s in trouble, he’ll have to deal with it. Did we go running to our parents when we were twenty-seven?’
‘We had each other, Jack. It wasn’t the same thing.’
He indicated to go on the freeway.
‘Oh, Jack. Don’t you care?’
‘Actually, no, not at this very moment. I don’t care, okay? We’ve given him money, love, advice. He’s never starved or had to sleep rough. Up to him now.’
Silence.
‘Goddammit, Milly, do you know what that meal cost?’
Jack merged too early and a car flashed lights at him. ‘Goddammit,’ he said again, and they drove home.
Milly did not speak to her husband until dinner was ready. Billy ate in his bedroom. Since the other kids had left home, he often refused to come out of his room. His father assumed he masturbated a lot. His mother thought he missed his siblings. Or was ashamed of his parents.
‘Jack! Dinner’s ready.’
‘What is it?’
‘It is what it is.’
‘Hamburger. Thanks. My favourite.’ He barely ate, half expecting poison.
‘Where’s yours?’
‘I am not hungry,’ she said and left the room. Strangely, her limp was less at times like this. Ike followed her, his toenails clicking on the hardwood.
‘We’re getting another dog, by the way,’ her voice trailed down the hall.
‘Are we?’
‘I need another dog,’ she said. ‘Another Lab.’
He looked at his hamburger, then sniffed it.
She’d get another dog (dogs needed dog company) and she’d leave Jack. It was obvious he was a terrible person. A heartless parent and a philanderer and mean with money and a dog-hater. She sat alone in the bedroom, arms round herself. She imagined leaving, but she couldn’t get past the practical difficulties. Where to go, and with what money? What would Harold say if she knocked on his door, bag in hand? His wife would certainly be concerned, and her own children horrified. In any case, there seemed to be no residue of love for Harold in her heart, so what would be the point? She had no idea where all that intensity had gone. Perhaps it had evaporated over Monterey Bay, in her husband’s arms, her physical fidelity still intact. She was either shallow, or she’d not been in love with Harold after all, merely lonely and susceptible to flattery. She’d been a fool, a lucky fool. Like that time with her neighbour Jeff, when she’d flirted with him and he’d assumed an attempted rape was the correct response. Terrifying at first, but after a short while she’d felt entirely unscathed by the event. Hadn’t most women fought off unwelcome advances? And hadn’t most wives had crushes? It all made her feel worldly.
But not worldly enough for independence. If she left this house, somehow, without money, would Billy come with her? Would the older children still respect her, want to visit her? Would she end up like her sister, Louise? Mentally unstable, impoverished, vulnerable? No real home, a transient? Or like her mother – coping with singleness by being manly, tough, aggressively competent? She couldn’t even remember if they had enough suitcases, or if over the years Jack had taken over the suitcase department. What had happened to those powder blue cases from her single life? She used to live without Jack. A long time ago she’d been a feisty secretary who escaped from the valley. She’d spent her own money and never had to account to anyone. How many times had she decided to leave him? And each time she had not, she felt her marriage settle more heavily around her shoulders. Somehow she’d become paralysed, both literally and metaphorically.
Slowly the day dimmed and she still sat, ignoring her hunger pangs and her shivers. She’d get up in a minute, turn on the heating and cook something for herself. She mentally listed all the possible solutions to her dilemmas. Leave Jack? Not possible. Mend her shattered femur bone and pelvis? Not possible. So, she did what she always did when feeling helpless. She thought of Jackie Kennedy, throwing herself through the barrage of nurses and orderlies to get to her philandering husband bleeding to death on the operating table.
‘Get out of my way! I want to be with him when he dies.’
She thought of darling Charlie. She thought of who he might have become, and o
f finding Jack alone in the dark hallway that funeral night, blubbering. The way she’d loved Jack for blubbering.
She thought of Grace Kelly, of her beautiful face going through the windscreen as her car tumbled down a hill last month. Life was precious and it was lucky to be alive at all.
Her day began to look better. She replayed that scene of Jackie in her bloodstained pink Chanel suit, forcing those doctors and nurses to allow her to hold her husband’s hand as he died.
Eventually Milly rose, switched on lights and the heating, and headed to the kitchen for some food. When she got there, instead of food, she decided to write a quick note to Donald. Better than a phone call, and in any case she didn’t want to be overheard by Jack and she needed to do something right this minute. She found some paper.
Darling Donald – It was great seeing you today, you looked GREAT.
Milly had a weakness for capital letters, and all her letters were extra large, loopy and long hand.
I am sending you this (began to write the word letter, then crossed out the let) check for your trip.
We are so proud of you. The world is your oyster. (Underlined the word oyster three times.)
She found the checkbook, wrote a check for $100, inserted it in the envelope, already construing the justification she would give to Jack, come budget night. She sealed and stamped the envelope.
‘Milly!’
‘What is it, Jack?’ She had heard the television, and noticed he was watching the news, but it must be commercial time now because he’d turned off the volume. She could see his body stretched out on the sofa and his neck craning round to call to her, but he couldn’t see her. She was on the other side of the refrigerator, slipping the letter into her pocket.
‘What are you doing in there, honey?’ His brandy-warmed voice.
‘Just getting something to eat.’
‘I’d skip the hamburger. Think it’s gone bad.’
This made her smile. She’d forgotten the undercooked hamburger she’d slapped in front of him earlier. She had excavated it from under some old ice cream, hoping it tasted as old and disgusting as it looked, in its ancient freezer bag. Probably the cow had died more than a decade ago.
Wait For Me Jack Page 13