“Who let you in?” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
“This is a gated community.” I sounded snobbish. It came out the wrong way.
“Yes, I know.” He stood squarely, almost like he was at attention. I had the urge to say, “At ease,” but I didn’t care if he were ever at ease again.
“They didn’t call from the guardhouse and warn me you were coming.”
“Sorry. I guess I should have called you.” He spoke like a courteous stranger, this person I’d been married to for more than twenty years. For some reason, the distance between us felt good.
“That’s all right. I’m not doing anything, except about a million things. How did you get in here?”
“I’m a member of the country club. The guard let me in. It’s on my sticker.”
“We should all come with warning stickers.”
He looked at me blankly, and patiently, which was unusual for him. He was making me nervous.
Finally, I said, “You’re a member of the country club? I thought you didn’t like country clubs, too elitist and all that.”
“I’ve changed.” He didn’t say that his new wife was a member of the country club, and that was the reason he was a member. He didn’t bring that up, or that he’d moved into her house, mortgage paid, with all the dark, gloomy furniture of a museum, and the heavy draperies and other frippery to keep him warm and cozy, and secure, the shithead.
“You’ve changed. That’s nice.” I didn’t ask him in. He seemed pleasant and subdued enough—but he was stiff and poised, sort of like a snake, before it strikes.
Then, he struck.
“She threw me out.” His face went from pink to pale, and he shifted to his other foot.
My mouth dropped open, but nothing came out.
“Then she threw every piece of paper and clothing I own down the stairs and out the door. Except for the computer, which I guess was too heavy.” He trailed off on the last detail.
“Crazy,” I said. I’m surrounded by crazy people, and it’s making me nuts. He’d married the woman before the ink had dried on the divorce, and I should feel sorry for him? But I did feel sorry for him. God help me, I did. What could I say? I was glad that the father of my children was on the street? What exactly was I supposed to do with this bit of news?
“Want to go to lunch?” he said.
We sat in a brown, sticky plastic booth at Wing Loh Fat’s Chinese restaurant on Indianapolis Boulevard, which ironically is US 41, and a direct, if ponderous, route to Florida. How far away from Florida I felt, looking at oriental glazed broccoli and beef, shiny pineapple-candied chicken and fried rice, and the face of a stranger, my ex-husband, in a restaurant not fifteen minutes away from the gross steel mills of Gary. I cracked open the cookie and wondered what my fortune would say. “You will meet a tall stranger.” Boy, that was wrong, too.
We hardly said a word, but I noticed some things had not changed. His appetite had not dimmed; he shoveled large forkfuls here and there, with nauseating speed and a lack of discrimination about the food itself. I either had to keep up or lose my appetite, which was quickly happening. His smooth jowls bulged in and out like a squirrel, a creature he had a lot in common with. They both ate with abandon and on the run, except that the squirrel sat in the tree. Hubby, on the other hand, often reminisced fondly about the “field” of his old Army days when he ate a variety of C-rations dumped into a helmet and cooked over an open fire. He was the type of person who needed to consume all those, and everything, around him. He once stuck an entire Big Mac into his mouth in two bites, and given the assortment of Chinese in front of us, he was about to eat the whole table in five minutes.
His cell phone rang and he answered it, lowering his face almost into his rice. His wife’s screams came through the tiny black holes of the phone into the large hole in his head. I could hear the hollow echo of her voice and imagine the tiny impotent woman trapped inside that phone, and trapped in a life with him. She had taken him, and she could have him, if she could get him back.
Suddenly, I pushed away my plate. In the place of an appetite for Chinese, I felt a sense of possession, of a future without him and a time of possibilities. Yes, she could have him. I was good, very good, with that. It came to me like a door opening in my head, and I felt better than I had for a long time. I was free of him. Really free. There was no knot of dread anymore for the fits he would spring on me; I could just walk away, or hang up, or do whatever it took to get away from him.
He flipped his wife closed, back into the tiny black holes from which she emerged to scream at him, and he put her in his pocket. He gave me a sheepish look. I knew that look. He was embarrassed, and he knew that vulnerability often won me over.
“I love you,” he said.
“Oh, please. It’s a little late for that.”
“I’ve always loved you. You’re my girl, my woman.”
He reached for my hand and turned it over. The pleading. This was truly incredible—he actually thought I would go back to him, like I’d done many times. I pulled my hand away.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I want to go home.”
“You know I love you. Say you still love me.”
“I can’t say that. I won’t say that. You’re married.”
“So?”
“What do you mean ‘so?’ You left.”
“You were going to leave me. You said you were.”
“I said that after you went to see a divorce lawyer, while you were diddling with that trash from southern Indiana, and God only knows how many others, and finally that fuzz ball you’re married to now.”
“You’re my wife,” he said. “She’s just my spouse.”
“Are you planning to leave your spouse?”
“Will you come back to me?”
So, that was it. He wanted a commitment from me before he pulled the plug on his latest marriage. I almost choked on the nonsense he was making up as he went along. In fact, I would choke before I told him that I would go back to him. I’d jump off a bridge before I’d break up their happy little duo.
He had just called me up one night and simply said, “I’m filing on Tuesday.” I remember that night. He’d been gone a lot around the time of that miserable Christmas, trysting away, moving his computers, going on “business” trips. And he was the one who was “filing.” I’d felt very cold at the sound of Hubby’s voice over the phone—so cold and impersonal. That night, I only said, “Good-bye.” That was it. After all the years, he was filing on Tuesday, and to this day, I’m sorry I didn’t see his face when he said it. But I knew what I’d see there. Nothing. Just the empty cold look of the needy.
My family didn’t say much about the divorce, except to keep reminding me that I’d known Hubby for years before I married him. But Dad was finally resigned. “You’re a strong one,” he said. “You’ll be fine, whatever you decide.” Dad was the only one who gave me a vote of confidence, and maybe Lucy. But I didn’t feel fine, not until that moment over spicy beef and broccoli and glazed chicken with fried rice.
I slid out of the booth and walked toward the door. I hoped he would follow me out of the restaurant, because I didn’t want to walk three miles back to the dollhouse on a hot, August afternoon, but I would gladly do it to get away from him.
He still had the same sad, pleading question on his face.
“No,” I said.
Later that day, mopping the floor, which usually rattled some sense into my brain, it occurred to me—he still hadn’t said a word about the kids and our move to Florida. I’d filed the paperwork with the lawyer, who served Hubby the notice. Then I waited. Nothing. What a strange man. And I thought I knew him, but actually it showed me I didn’t know all that much about the person I’d married. Why on all of this good green earth did I ever think I knew the man I married?
7
PLAYING WITH MATCHES, BURNING IT DOWN
I splashed the mop around and whacked into the wall
s. It felt good, but I couldn’t help remembering, and wondering, why he would even think to try and come back to me. He had the most convenient memory of any person I’d ever known.
It might have been different for us—even with the misery that preceded the divorce. We’d had our arguments and broken furniture. But I always held that very small glimmer of hope that things would change for the better. Such is the goodness of hope; it doesn’t die easy.
Then it did. Everything changed in one day’s time. I’d known him for so long, and all it took to end it—definitively—was the space between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m., on a dark, cold morning. I can say that for sure now—with the hindsight of the lucky, and my sanity relatively intact. That one time hit me like a rock hits water. After that morning, the events rippled out and enclosed us in larger and larger circles until we were all floating in the warp with no way out of what we fell into: the divorce, the family fights, the fleeing to Florida.
It was very early that day when I heard the annoying rattle of the garage door going up. It woke me up instantly; but that was easy. All those mirthless nights, I slept on the edge of disaster, ready to jump to God-only-knows-where. The clock said 3:09 a.m., and I was alone in the bed again. The garage door was disturbing; but it was not just the clackety-clack that made me sit up in the dark. Something was different, even though this had been his routine for many weeks. He left in the night, and he was still gone in the morning when I woke up to get the kids off to school. He told me he had to work at odd hours because the office was moving to another building. He and his staff needed the time to relocate computers when business was shut down.
“That’s a great idea,” I said. It was a new business for him, after leaving the army behind. We both wanted it to work. He’d gone into a partnership, and his plan was to buy out the retiring owner. I wanted it to work out, not only for financial reasons, but for us, too, with all the moving around and his efforts to give up drinking behind us. Some days, I even thought it might be possible. I wanted to believe it because I had once loved him, and besides, he came with a military guarantee: Duty, Honor, Country. He would never lie or cheat.
I sat in the dark, listening to his car fade away, at an hour before birds chirped, when the traffic began to hum at the burst of day, and then I remembered an address: 1776 Fairview.
It grabbed me. It was easy to remember—our American Independence, and a familiar street. And it was written on the inside of a matchbook cover. I’d picked it up the day before among the Kleenex, wallet, and keys dumped on to the bureau, an odd thing to carry since he didn’t smoke anymore. I fiddled with the cover, reading it again and thinking about the address, while he shaved and scrubbed himself in the bathroom. He always emerged looking blister-clean and smelling of Irish Spring.
I remembered that piece of cardboard with an ad for an upscale local Italian restaurant on one side and an address on the inside. The matches—lined up like red-capped soldiers guarding an address.
That cold early morning, it hit me all at once. After everything, it would come down to a matchbook cover.
I flew straight out of bed, down the stairs past the hallway mirror. My hair was wild, the result of another failed permanent, my eyes were dark holes in my white face. I didn’t even bother to stop for shoes. I needed to get this done. I ran. Afraid.
It was still dark when I put the key in the ignition, and for an instant I thought it would be better to go back to bed, put my head into my comforter, and stay in the dark and not know and not care. It was not too late to drop the whole thing. I should be calm and sensible and look at the big picture of all the years together. I should let the affair pass, if there was such a thing, and I wasn’t even sure there was. Call it a bad cold. Sleep it off. But the thought of not finding out flew right out of my head, because I had to know.
I mercilessly ground the gearshift into reverse, narrowly missing the lawnmower, and the car spun out of the garage. In less than ten minutes, I was driving past the snug brick bungalow at 1776 Fairview where the windows burned yellow in the dark. They were the only lights visible down the length of identical houses on the block, but I wasn’t looking for the lights. I drove along looking for his car. It wasn’t parked anywhere on the block. What did I expect, that he would be standing next to it, or that I would see him in her doorway waving at me? Hear I am, honey. How are you?
I pulled to the curb in a slump. I was tired and I didn’t want to deal with this. I’d been so sure, waking up, remembering the address and pieces of past conversations. The things he’d said: “Oh, I saw Pammie. You know, Pammie. She’s moved back up here from Kokomo. . . ?” Pammie? It had to be a Pammie? Not a Mathilda or a Mary or a Martha? Pammie on Fairview. I couldn’t even remember her last name.
Maybe I was wrong.
I relaxed my grip on the steering wheel and decided to go home and curl up in bed for what was left of the morning. I turned the corner at the end of the street to head home, and—one more time—I glanced in the direction of 1776 Fairview.
I wonder what would have become of me—of us—if I hadn’t taken that one last look?
But I did. The alley opened up like it was shouting at me. And there, stuck out at an angle about halfway down the gravel stretch behind the back fences, his red Pontiac. He’d parked it out of the way of traffic, out of view.
At once, it was a triumphant moment. I had been right. But then, anger rushed through me, made me blind with fury. I yanked at the wheel and shot down the alley. I wanted to believe it was true—and at the same time, I didn’t. There had to be more than one red Pontiac in the suburban Chicago area.
The tires bit the gravel and spit rock against fence rails and garbage cans and garage doors. I pulled up and hit the brakes just behind his car, and there it was: license plate ELG321. I had the presence of mind to check the numbers again. They were still the same; they belonged to him. I slammed my fist onto the horn and blasted it again and again, stopping just long enough to let each blast seep into the quiet houses of the surrounding neighborhood.
Rage is selfish. I wanted everyone around me to be as disturbed as I was, to have their lives deprived of their peace. Feel my anger. Feel the betrayal.
With the continual shriek of the horn, lights, one after another, blinked on in the other houses. But nothing changed at 1776 Fairview.
Then a shadow passed over the light inside. The door cracked open. I wanted to see his face, but darkness interfered. I imagined his confusion, and surprise, and then, the nonchalance of someone who always had his own unimpeachable reasons for everything he did. Then she came to the door. The two of them stood together, his foot propping the screen open, just a silhouette at first. He was wearing a T-shirt and unbelted pants, and she, her head like a growth sprouting from his back, peered over his shoulder. They didn’t move, and all the while, I sat in the Taurus in the alley, my fury exploding. I kept up the wild assault on the horn even though it wouldn’t do any good. He wouldn’t answer a screeching horn. Besides, there was no answer for this.
I glared at him across the back yard of her house, over the garbage cans. I squinted through my anger; I wanted to see his face, but I couldn’t make it out. All I saw was an outline of the two of them. Then, she withered away from his shoulder, and he pushed the screen door all the way open. In response, I leaned out of the car window and screamed at him, my face rock-hard, words I don’t even remember. It was as effective as the horn. Up and down the alley, more lights came on, and doors opened. I didn’t care. I think I yelled that I never wanted to see his face again. At least that was true. After that night, I could hardly look at him.
He stood there and listened to me scream, until finally, he stepped back into the house. The door slapped shut. The lights went out, and by then, all the doors had closed up and down Fairview.
He let me finish my screaming, and that was the last of it. At least he gave me that. But it didn’t feel good. Nor do any good. Although I sat there for minutes, or maybe an hour, I don’t really rem
ember, he didn’t come back out. I didn’t expect him to. I didn’t want him to. I couldn’t move, sitting there, clutching the steering wheel, my motor running like crazy. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but one thing I didn’t do—then, or ever—I didn’t cry. It just wasn’t in me. I was far too angry for that.
I sat in the car in the middle of the alley. It was near sunrise, and most of the world was still. I didn’t hear a bird or a garbage truck, but thoughts ricocheted through my brain. The road ahead had rolled up that morning. And now I had to figure out what direction to take to get out of this mess of a marriage. It was broken; beyond fixing. Lucy’s words from one hellish Christmas past came back. “You can’t go on.” I had agreed with her then, although, at the time, I was not thoroughly convinced. Now I was.
What the hell. I wanted to believe this tearing away would make me stronger. I would make myself believe it. Whatever happened next would be on me—all my own doing. No matter what, I had to make the best of it.
That day was the last day of “us” together, as a couple. But it wasn’t the last and only time he was a cheat. It no longer mattered; I was finished, and I guess, he was, too, because he beat me to the finish line. In a phone call, not long after that morning, he told me, “I’m filing. On Tuesday.”
The Last Cadillac Page 5