‘Do you, honey? Thanks for letting me know.’
‘So what are you making?’
‘Oh, some pasta, I think.’
‘With pesto?’
‘Probably. I think there’s half a jar in the fridge. Should still be okay.’
‘And black olives?’
‘If there are any. Think I put some in a bowl somewhere.’
‘You could heat up that French bread, maybe. Sprinkle some water on it first, wrap it in foil. Press some garlic.’
‘Suppose I could do that,’ she said, not reminding him she knew very well how to freshen stale bread. ‘Aren’t you watching the news?’
‘There’s a bottle of red left, I think.’
‘Oh yes, there is. Thanks, Jack, but you can watch the news now, I’m fine.’ In her prim cold voice. ‘I’m still getting another dog, Jack. I mean it. I’m thinking maybe a spaniel this time.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Another male.’
‘Huh?’
She boiled the water, pressed garlic, sliced some chorizo from a few days ago. It was pleasing, this using up of old things. It made her happy – to watch a nutritious meal emerge from what could easily have ended up in the garbage. It harked back to their more frugal days, the best days. Food really had tasted better then, when she’d make the best of what she found lurking in corners.
Marriage could be like that, she thought. Taking what was, and rather than tossing it all away in a fit of temper, finding a use for it. Economy, that was the answer. When the water boiled, she automatically put in enough pasta for two. Out of my way, she said to all the forces and temptations of divorce. I want to be with him when he dies.
Four Years Earlier
The Advent of the Big-Nosed Man
Nov 28th, 1978, College of Marin, Kentfield
10:21am
Milly kept coming back to the image of those American mothers in that small settlement on the north coast of South America. Jonestown. Last week, those women gave toxic Kool-Aid to their children. Put it in their baby bottles and plastic cups, and then what…put them to bed? Read them stories, sang last lullabies? Then those mothers drank their own Kool-Aid and curled up with their children. She kept thinking of the people who entered Jonestown afterwards. They must have thought everyone was asleep at first. Almost a thousand people in a very still, deep sleep. And before she could get used to that idea, just yesterday, councillor Harvey Milk was gunned down in the middle of a normal working day in his office in San Francisco. The two disasters were connected in her mind.
The world!
The world!
Life seemed to knot into messy disasters, in between trundling through spells of routine bad news. 1968, for instance. She hadn’t thought about it at the time, but that had been a messy knot of a year too. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy – both killed. Then losing Louise and gaining her boys, with their good manners and wan faces. All within seven weeks. She looked back now, and saw that it took a decade to properly appreciate the size of that catastrophe. World leaders being gunned down; hard to get the right perspective on her sister’s departure.
And now, Harvey Milk and Jonestown. Mayor Moscone too, she reminded herself guiltily. It worried her that no one seemed to think his death was as tragic.
It all put her in a certain mood. Anything at all might happen now. She felt a little raw, a little ragged. Not quite herself. And it had to be said: she felt a little more alive than she had last week, when life had been less frightening.
She noticed things more. Different things.
For instance, she noticed Harold’s wheelchair. She made an effort to open the door for him when he came to class, and immediately felt less disabled and therefore less depressed. As if he was obese, and she’d been worrying about her little paunch. (Aha! Not so fat after all!) Her left leg visibly dragged all the time now – she was a lopsided ship, always trying to correct the list. There was no pain if she let her right leg take her weight when walking, but excruciating pain if she forgot. And twice now she had fallen. She’d been angry and not wanted any help getting up. Unsuspected depths of stubbornness had risen up, without her summoning them. She was surprised by her own determination. Apparently, Milly MacAlister would not be crippled. She would not.
The second thing Milly noticed was that Harold had an extremely large nose. A beak, leaning over his Roman mouth. Olive skin, high intelligent forehead, lazy-lidded dark eyes, and that nose – enormous. Fascinating. And strangely attractive, the more she looked at it. She was sitting to the left of him, one row back, so she could gaze at his profile anytime she liked. A curiously compulsive habit.
The teacher was talking about the symbolism in The Heart of Darkness, and possible influences on Conrad at the time, particularly related to the political upheaval in…Poland? Maybe Milly was not listening carefully enough. Her pen slid over the notebook, making doodles of daisies. Outside, blue jays were yammering away in the acacia trees, as if they knew the winter blossoms were weeks away. There was no heating and the room was chilly. Despite her new fisherman’s sweater, she was cold. Not being able to move quickly affected her circulation, and she often felt cold. The teacher had moved on to Conrad’s family history, and his publishers. The public’s reaction. Milly tried for a full ten minutes to focus, and made a page of neat notes. Rewarded herself with a glance at Harold’s nose. But he turned just then and their eyes snagged. She was too slow to look away, and blushed.
‘Did you manage to make notes?’ he asked when she opened the door for him later.
‘Oh! I tried, but I could hardly concentrate. Too cold. And I need this class to get my degree.’
‘Is it your last one? Me too.’
‘Really? That’s amazing!’ she gushed.
‘Yeah.’
‘How long have you been going?’
‘Three years.’ He held up three fingers.
‘That’s amazing.’
‘Three years for you, too?’
‘Yes! Well, ten, actually,’ she admitted. ‘One class a semester.’
‘Excuse me,’ said the teacher, trying to squeeze around them and leave the classroom. Then he turned and said: ‘Have you two entered the short-story competition? Deadline is tomorrow you know.’
‘Yeah,’ said Harold. Then in a low voice to Milly: ‘Got to admit, I think it has a chance. Best thing I’ve ever done.’
‘Me too,’ said Milly, and laughed. ‘Actually mine’s pretty awful, but who knows. Thought I’d give it a whirl.’
Then Harold and Milly found themselves in the hall. Light poured through the glass doors at the end, white and hard. Classroom doors opened and shut, and students chattered around them. About Jonestown, about Harvey Milk, about the Huichol Indian exhibit at the de Young museum, guitar practice times, dates for the movies, sales at the Gap, bands playing at the Fillmore this weekend. Two ponytailed boys shouted to each other down the hall:
‘Dude! Free concert tomorrow at Golden Gate Park, want a ride?’
‘Cool, man. I’ll bring my bong.’
This – just this – was why she was here. To be a college student! Well, not really one of them, but to be immersed in their world for a few hours a week. And to eventually join the elite tribe her husband belonged to: of college graduates. Milly stood straight, balancing on her right leg, left foot hardly touching the ground, her backpack nonchalantly over one shoulder like all the younger students. She noticed that her right hand had found its way to the back of Harold’s chair.
‘It’s electric,’ he said. ‘I don’t need pushing.’
‘Oh! Of course. I probably couldn’t really, anyway.’
‘Let’s have a coffee,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do you have time? Let’s go to Café Olé, my treat.’
His chair began to whir down the hall, towards the ramped doors, but then the doors flew open and a group of boys in identical athletic shirts rushed in. So many robust bodies! Harold looked up at her – he had to look up at her – and smiled
.
‘You okay? They’ll be gone in a minute. Hold on to my chair if you like.’ He swivelled to provide a protective barrier.
She felt them rush past, all that youth and carelessness, and she shivered because she was about to sit in a cafe with a man not her husband. She looked round at the boys, and they were good looking, of course, but all their noses were small.
‘Right,’ said Harold. ‘You ready? Let’s go.’
‘Yeah, let’s go,’ she echoed.
And just like that, aged fifty, with her oestrogen ebbing daily and rogue hairs appearing on her chin, and her breasts finally grown large, Milly MacAlister was smitten. Like a sudden bee sting, or a clap of thunder. She felt nauseous and stunned. It turned out that loving Jack had not inoculated her from loving another man after all. It must be a different kind of virus, she found herself thinking, having spent years charting her children’s cold and flu bugs. She knew you didn’t catch the same virus twice, but the world was heaving with other viruses, and the same viruses mutating. It was inevitable to be infected again. Wasn’t it?
Jack didn’t seem to care about avoiding infection. You think he would, after Colette. Her husband, the philanderer. But unlike him, she’d never go that far. Goodness me, how foolish that would be! No one could help getting a crush, but there was no excuse for acting on it. None whatsoever. Wives who had affairs were just plain tacky. These thoughts took two seconds, while she walked lopsidedly to the cafe. During the second cup of coffee – and she didn’t even like coffee – Harold brought her thumping to the ground with:
‘My wife likes to bake muffins. Chocolate chip. But she’s begun putting all sorts of weird healthy stuff in them. Seeds. Wheat germ. Brewer’s yeast. Yech. You ever tasted carob? Disgusting.’
Wife! Of course, but why did he have to say it?
‘I like muffins to be sweet and fattening, myself,’ she said. She gobbled up the last of her muffin, to demonstrate her sensual appetite.
‘Ditto.’
‘My kids all have sweet tooths,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t sound right, does it? Sweet teeth? No, not right either.’
Harold smiled, then he waved the waitress over and ordered two more muffins.
‘My husband likes muffins too,’ said Milly, lobbing the word husband casually. Well, it was only fair. A spouse for a spouse.
‘Is he a student here too?’
She laughed. ‘Jack? No! He graduated twenty-five years ago. Four of our kids are away at college. Well, our son and daughter and our two nephews, who’ve lived with us for years. They’re all over the state, no one chose the same college.’
‘Goodness. Four.’
‘Still have one at home. Billy. He’s ten.’
‘Five!’
Milly considered mentioning seven-year-old August. They were seeing quite a lot of him these days, since Colette got remarried.
‘Do you have kids?’
‘Nope!’ he said with gusto. Then a quieter, ‘No.’
‘Oh. Smart thinking.’ Floundering. She wished she could shirk the kids immediately, join Harold in his childfree world.
‘Well, we did have one, but she was stillborn.’
‘Oh, no! I’m so sorry. We had a baby that died too,’ she rushed in, relieved.
He looked out the window at the traffic in the drizzle. She did too. A woman crossed the road pushing a shopping cart full of what looked like wet rags. She wore three coats over a pair of jeans, and a headband with rain-sodden feathers. Others quickly walked round her, with umbrellas and rain coats. Milly sighed and felt guilty for using poor Charlie as a social lubricant. She hadn’t mentioned him to a stranger in years. What kind of woman was she? She pictured his dinosaur sleep suit, which instantly invoked genuine grief.
‘Do you have a degree already, or is this your first?’
‘My first,’ she said, heavily.
‘Want to catch up, eh?’
‘Sort of. At first I just thought it would…’
‘Be fun?’
‘Improve things.’
Jack had not stopped her, but he hadn’t exactly encouraged her either. He treated her classes like a cute housewifely hobby. College of Marin was not a university, and everyone knew an Associate degree was a nothing degree. Last night, when he called to her from the sofa asking if there was any beer, she’d answered in her preoccupied voice: ‘I’ll check as soon as I finish this.’ He’d walked into their bedroom, and there she’d been, her forehead wrinkled in concentration, her right hand scribbling notes. He’d blinked and left.
‘I just wanted to…to improve myself,’ Milly said to Harold. ‘See if I could do it. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?’
‘Not at all. I want to, as well. Learn. Go on learning. But I keep daydreaming in class, and I’m not finding it very easy to study at home either.’
Milly was dying to ask why it was not easy at home. As they left, she blurted out:
‘Why don’t you come for dinner some time?’
Oh my God! Who said that? She felt possessed. Maybe just noticing a man’s nose was enough to open the door to that kind of thing.
‘I mean, you and your wife, of course. Come this Saturday.’
It was the first time in her life Milly had initiated a date with a man, even though technically she was just inviting another married couple for dinner. Their social life was usually of Jack’s making, since that incident with Margery. Women friends had now been excised from Milly’s world. Hard enough not be able to trust her husband, and she couldn’t make him disappear. But friends who engaged in hanky-panky with her husband – well, they were easy to dispose of. The people at their dinner parties were Jack’s friends. The main criteria, as far as Milly could make out, was that they were funny, intelligent and Democrats. A lot of authors and editors. Mostly men, without children or wives. They smoked, drank and swore a lot, and sometimes stayed the night on the sofa. Ernie and Bernice still visited, of course, though come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Bernice for a while.
There had been a time, before Jack worked in publishing and they moved back to the Bay Area, when there’d been no single people in their crowd. Milly remembered how they used to meet – always two by two. To drink, dine, flirt of course, and rehash their daily lives for the immense comfort of hearing echoes. My daughter, she’s so slow at her reading, I worry. Me too! My plumber, he wants more money, doesn’t do half the work he promised to, doesn’t do shit. I know, you can’t trust them these days. My boss, well, I’m seriously thinking of just telling him he can go screw himself. Me, too! My husband is such a slob, leaves his stuff all over the house like a baby, and he never cooks, not even a hot dog. Terrible!
Milly would never admit this to Jack, but sometimes she felt nostalgic for those days. She had much in common with those other housewives. Somehow housewives had gone out of fashion, and their new friends hardly made eye contact with her. They were always laughing hysterically at things she didn’t understand. She kept the peanut and potato chip bowls full, the ashtrays empty, and let Jack’s friends pull her on their laps sometimes, or give her a good-natured squeeze around her shoulders. Millymoo, some of them called her, and she pretended to like it.
‘Well, dinner would be really nice,’ answered a surprised Harold, as if whatever he had in mind had to be rejigged. But his smile was genuine, even humble. He was blushing, she was blushing, they were adorably pink, both of them. And the world tilted and tilted and tilted. Why weren’t the buildings crashing to the ground? Had she ever felt this sensation before? As if the normal boundaries which contained everything were suddenly gone, and she unravelled into eternity. On and on! Expanding, body and soul, into newness. No wonder Jack gave in to Colette, to Margery, to the Susans and Lindas.
The morning of the dinner party, Milly gave herself a facial. Egg yolk with a bit of olive oil, and while this was drying on her face, she scoured The Joy of Cooking for something new. She’d have time to go to the store, clean the house, put some flowers in vases, shower and give
her hair a vinegar rinse to make it shine. She’d wear that new Indian print wraparound skirt and peasant blouse. Would Billy be a nightmare? Rude, sulky? Possible. Send him to stay with a friend? And what about Ike and Truman? What if they jumped up on Harold’s wheelchair? Well, they’d be bound to; they always egged each other on, and loved all visitors pathetically. Harold might even be allergic to dogs. Maybe send both dogs off with Billy. Yes.
The day went like clockwork. Facial pores tightened, menu decided upon, ingredients purchased and cooked to perfection, house tidied – well, floor vacuumed and table wiped – and white daisies and bluebells in vases, fresh as the sea. Billy and dogs escorted off the premises. Harold and his wife pulled up in a red Saab, peering doubtfully at the front door, where the house number used to be bolted. Milly spied them from the kitchen window and hobbled to the door, but Jack got there first.
‘Come in, come in! Milly’s new college friends! You must be…sorry, what’re your names?’
She’d forgotten the rogue element, her husband. He’d had a few beers. They wouldn’t realise it, but they were being mocked already. Her heart sank, because she could see how the evening would go. All the way to making fun of them after they’d left. She felt her romantic love shift into a protective blanket she wanted to toss around Harold and his nose.
But wait. Another rogue element: Harold’s wife. She was chic, petite, with a knowing smile outlined with red lipstick. Smiling right now, ready for an adventure. And was Jack taking the bait? Would he down weapons in order to pursue? Sneer or seduce? She glanced down at Harold. He was looking up at her with such open tenderness, that both Jack and the wife disappeared. Just like that! First a room crowded with question marks, then just Harold.
It rained and rained all weekend; a thin windless rain that flooded the gutters and thrummed on the roof at night while Milly lay in the dark, replaying scenes with Harold. On Monday morning, they met in the college hallway before class.
‘Done your homework?’ she asked shyly. His nose looked downright aristocratic today. A nobleman.
Wait For Me Jack Page 14