by John Fulton
Evelyn smiled, thankful that he couldn’t see her obvious happiness in this dark. “I would.”
And then she heard her bedroom door open and close, and she knew, before falling asleep again, that he was gone.
Three days later, Evelyn met Tessa and Margaret at the house on Murray Avenue for an early dinner. Heidi had warned her to prepare for the worst. “I’m sure the little girl still hopes her mother will come back. She might not be welcoming. And you might want to think about dressing down a little—not looking too pretty.” Instead, Evelyn wore her nicest blue sundress, blue being the color that complemented her most, brought a bottle of wine and a dozen orchids, which turned out to be unnecessary in this house surrounded by garden beds of irises, tulips, daisies, and other flowering plants and bushes that Evelyn could not name.
“This is my good friend Evelyn,” Russell said, introducing her to his family on the front porch. They’d all dressed nicely, too: the grandmother in a white blouse and yellow skirt, a surprisingly youthful outfit for this woman who wore her gray hair in a tight coil, and the girl in a green dress with a lace collar. The girl’s long blond hair had been fussed over, pulled into a braid held together by brightly colored barrettes. They all shook hands, after which Tessa stepped back, behind her father, from where she stared at Evelyn with obvious perplexity. Evelyn had never felt comfortable around children—their high volume, their fierce likes and dislikes, their blatant honesty and unchecked emotions—even if she’d always wanted to have at least one child of her own. In the last weeks, she’d caught herself wondering what it might be like to assume a maternal role toward another woman’s child. But now that she stood before the girl, she was surprised by a rush of anxiety, even as she forced herself to bend down, smile, and say, in her sweetest voice, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Tessa.” The girl stepped out from behind the shelter of her father now and twirled, her dress flaring out. When she faced Evelyn again, Tessa was smiling, and Evelyn felt relieved; for whatever reason, this gorgeous little girl seemed to like her, at least for the moment.
“Welcome,” Margaret said in a voice that was polite, if not entirely warm.
Out back, Russell donned an apron and presided over the fire with an easy authority, a large grill fork in one hand and a spatula in the other, while Tessa took Evelyn on a tour of the flowerbeds. “I’m responsible for the backyard,” she said. “I water twice a day, in the morning and evening. It’s better to water when it’s cooler. And earlier in the spring, I keep the squirrels away from the tulip bulbs; they like to dig them up and bury them at the neighbor’s so that next spring our tulips come up in someone else’s yard.” After telling Evelyn of the thieving squirrels, Tessa smiled mischievously. “You’re my dad’s girlfriend, aren’t you?” she whispered.
“Well,” Evelyn said, flustered.
Tessa nodded. “I thought so.”
They sat out on the back porch for dinner and talked about harmless topics—the cold, long winter that had recently ended, Tessa’s soccer league, and Russell’s latest project, a stone path through the flowerbeds, which he’d start on next week. In the shallow darkness lightning bugs drifted by, and Russell lit citronella candles to keep the mosquitoes away. Now and then, the rattle of locusts began in the distance, crescendoed, and all at once ceased. While Tessa remained talkative, if increasingly tired, sprawled in her father’s lap, Margaret was reserved, listening too carefully to Evelyn, nodding at her every word, and seeming to watch her so closely that Evelyn became self-conscious whenever she looked at Russell and made sure she did so without obvious affection.
It was not until Russell had gone upstairs to put Tessa to bed that the two women, Margaret at the kitchen sink rinsing wineglasses and Evelyn loading the dishwasher, talked more openly. “Tessa’s wonderful,” Evelyn said, wanting to break the silence of the last few moments. “In fact, to tell you the truth, I was worried that Tessa, for obvious reasons, wouldn’t much like me.”
Margaret had just turned the water off and faced Evelyn now. “Yes, she is a wonderful girl. And it’s more than clear that she likes you.”
“But you don’t like me,” Evelyn said, responding to the elderly woman’s chilly tone.
“No,” Margaret said, “it’s not that. It’s that I don’t know you yet. I’m sure you’re lovely. Russell is very taken with you. Of course, you’re aware of his feelings.” Margaret smiled briefly, but her tone remained guarded. “I should tell you that I have no illusions about my daughter. She is not at all likely to return to us. At the same time, I still struggle with wanting things to be otherwise. I still hope. And I think I can say for Russell that he still hopes, too. It is not impossible, you know, that she could return. It is only nearly impossible.” Margaret took a dishcloth from the counter and began drying her hands vigorously.
“Russell tells me the chances are a million to one.”
To this, Margaret snapped back, “There is a chance, isn’t there?”
“Perhaps I should go,” Evelyn said.
Margaret shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’ve been rude. But you’ll understand, won’t you, that it’s different: the way a mother sees her daughter and the way a husband sees his wife? A man can always go out and find someone else. My daughter will always be my daughter, no matter what happens.” Her voice had become angry, and she paused, surveying the wiped surfaces of the kitchen, before looking at Evelyn again. When she spoke now, her anger was gone. “Russell has been without a companion for years. I can certainly understand that he’d want … that he has his needs. In any case, he tells me that you’re serious about him.”
“Yes.”
Margaret nodded, not to approve but merely to register Evelyn’s brief answer. “I should tell you, if Russell has not already, that we’ve considered letting her go. We’ve considered stopping food and water, but I haven’t been able to reconcile myself to taking an active role in terminating her life. I think Russell might do so if it were just his decision to make.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this,” Evelyn said, noting how practiced and calculated Margaret’s speech had seemed.
“With you,” Margaret said, “there might be added pressure.”
“There won’t be added pressure.” Evelyn felt her voice rise, but Margaret did not seem at all ruffled.
“Good,” she said, folding the dishcloth, placing it resolutely on the countertop, and making it clear with this gesture that they could move on to other topics of conversation.
By early June the thunderstorm season had ended and left the river level high and its waters full of debris and insects, so that the fish, Russell claimed, were more eager to feed on the surface. Evelyn’s cast improved and Russell became more at ease on his bike, though he was cautious in ways that irritated Evelyn and, at times, drove her to provoke him. Russell would never, for instance, run a red light, even if no cars were visible for blocks in either direction. He cycled on the sidewalks whenever possible while Evelyn, not about to satisfy his paranoia and avoid the traffic with him, especially when there was no traffic, rode beside him in the street. She even made a show of it. “Look,” she’d say, lifting her arms into the air, “no hands.” During breaks in traffic, she ran red lights and waited for him on the other side of the intersection until the light turned green.
On a breezy, sunny afternoon, at the end of a long ride, Evelyn, fed up with Russell, who was waiting at the crosswalk, shot into the intersection of Huron and Main just as a Ford Explorer had been about to take a left turn on a green light. Though Evelyn and the Explorer stopped, easily avoiding a collision, Russell began shouting at her from the corner. “Get off!”
“What?” Evelyn was still in the middle of the intersection, and a car behind the Explorer began honking.
“I said to get off. We’re walking.” The anger in his voice made Evelyn comply.
Without talking, they walked their bikes down Huron, passing the meager oak saplings that the city had just planted at intervals along the pave
ment. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” Evelyn finally said. “That wasn’t even close.” He just kept walking, determined, it seemed, to remain silent, and Evelyn mounted her bike and rode into the street again. “I won’t let you bully me. I won’t.”
He stopped then, and so did Evelyn. A car whipped past her. His face was red and streaked with sweat. “Please get out of the road.”
“No,” she said.
“You do this on purpose,” Russell said. “You run red lights, you ride too fast. And I don’t know why you do it.”
“I can’t always be afraid.”
“You almost … you almost got,” he began to say.
“I didn’t almost get anything.”
Russell shook his head and let out a long breath, after which his shoulders seemed to collapse, as if he were conceding the point. “Please,” he said. “Please just walk with me for now. Tomorrow you can ride in the streets. You can do whatever you want.”
And because he was pleading with her, Evelyn got off and walked beside him on the sidewalk.
Minutes later, after they had closed Evelyn’s front door behind them, Russell surprised her by removing the keys from her hand, kissing her rapidly, without tenderness or passion, and lowering her to the dining room floor. He stripped her tight biking pants off, pulling her panties with them and yanking them over her shoes. “I’m all sweaty, Russell,” she said, wanting to slow him down. His hand was on her crotch and he was kissing her mouth forcefully. The throw rug dug into the skin over her tailbone; she yelled out for a pillow, and he grabbed one from a chair and shoved it beneath her. She grasped onto a table leg while he entered her, moving with enough force to make the ceiling light fixture sway. His hands gripped her shoulders, holding her down, in place, while he came, after which he lifted himself off her and rolled onto his back.
Evelyn lay quietly, looking at the myriad legs of the table and chairs rising above her and the jigsaw scraps of early evening light scattered over the floor. “I didn’t like that,” she said. It wasn’t that she’d felt coerced or violated. It was the fact that what he’d done had been all for himself. The way he’d held her, the way he’d moved, finished, then retreated. She hadn’t been necessary. She’d felt like anyone, any woman being fucked too quickly. “You seemed far away,” she said.
“There are worse things, Evelyn, than death.” He was still breathing hard from his exertion, and there was an edge of meanness in his voice. It occurred to Evelyn that he’d been furious with her the whole time he’d been inside her. “I know that firsthand. Most people don’t. Most people never even think about it.”
“Don’t, please, bring her up after we’ve just had …”
“I know it,” he said. “I know it firsthand.” He stopped himself and let out a breath. “I’m sorry.”
But he didn’t sound sorry, and Evelyn felt even angrier at the thought of how he’d treated her, how he’d taken her on the floor just now, how he’d been thinking of his wife, of his tragedy. He must have thought of her constantly, every minute of the day, every time he saw a car drive past, every time he mounted his bike, every time he fucked Evelyn. “I want to know something,” she said. “What would you do if she woke up one day and was herself again?”
“That’s not possible,” Russell said.
“I’m asking it anyway.”
“I’m not answering it.” They were lying side by side, not looking at each other and not touching.
“Margaret had a talk with me last week,” Evelyn said. “She told me that you still hoped Jenny would come back.”
“Do you want me to say that I don’t?”
“She told me that you two had considered letting her go, but decided against it. Margaret worries that our relationship might influence you, might pressure you into reconsidering.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?” Russell said, calmly, as if he’d just understood something. “Are you pressuring me?”
“If it’s really impossible for her to wake up,” Evelyn asked, “if she’s really gone forever, why don’t you let her go?”
“I see.” There was a fierce tremor in his voice now.
“While you fuck me, you think of her,” Evelyn said. “You think of her the whole time. What would you do? What if she woke up tomorrow and asked for you?”
“All right,” he said, sitting up on his elbows. “I’d go with her. I’d leave whomever I was with, and I’d go with her. She was Tessa’s mother. She was my wife for nearly twenty years.”
He had raised his voice. He’d spoken out of anger. But Evelyn understood that he had also spoken honestly, and for that she was both furious and grateful. “Thank you for answering my question,” she said. “I’d like you to go now. Please.”
The next afternoon, Russell showed up at her front door, his shoulders slouched in a posture of exhaustion and defeat that Evelyn recognized now and that made him seem, despite his size, small. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” he said. “I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Me, too,” Evelyn said. She had planned on delivering a speech about taking a few weeks apart, a small break from each other. But she hesitated now. His hair was uncombed, his face drawn and bloodless, and seeing him in despair made Evelyn want to stay with him until he felt better.
He shrugged. “I’m no good to anyone, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not perfect either.” And then Evelyn added, “This might not work. I’m not saying we shouldn’t keep trying. I’m just saying that we might not want to get our hopes up.”
Russell put his hands in his pockets, took a deep breath, and nodded. “I won’t hope too much, and I’ll keep trying.”
“Me, too,” Evelyn said, feeling relieved and already too hopeful.
That weekend she and Russell went out on the river again. It was a windy afternoon, and the water rippled with the changing directions of sudden gusts. Wind-torn branches and maple leaves floated by. Drifting with the current, canoers—a father and son, a girlfriend and boyfriend—waved at Russell and Evelyn. Russell had already pulled in two small-mouth bass while Evelyn struggled more than ever to control her casts in the wind. She caught her line three times in the thick growth on the riverbank before giving up and retreating to a patch of grass, where she sat and watched Russell, up to his thighs in water, gracefully lobbing his line into a ripple.
She’d wanted so much to like fishing, because Jenny had not, and because this shared activity might somehow sustain them, keep them going despite an ornery mother-in-law and Russell’s maddening fear. But Evelyn was tired of her jealousy and didn’t much like the person she was becoming under its influence. Even as she sat back and admired this lanky, tall, surprisingly agile man, she imagined how they’d eventually ask each other for space. She wanted to be the first to do it, to have at least that little bit of satisfaction and power, and to avoid the familiar humiliation of rejection, of all those men who’d never called her back and, even more urgently, the helplessness she’d felt when her ex-husband had left, had ceased to like her, and nothing—not begging, not threatening, not crying, not yelling, not even feigning indifference—would change his mind.
No doubt Russell, gentle, lovely Russell, would let her end it without trying to seize the initiative, to hurt her back. He’d likely apologize, say how sorry he was for them to come to this. Then he would leave her alone. This thought made her want him more; and so, sitting on the grass in a patch of warm sun, the breeze on her face, she saw that she was already hopeless, that she wanted him and could not be with him. Nonetheless, on the long, slow bike ride into town, she behaved herself, staying behind him on the sidewalk. At the busy intersection of Ashley and Huron, where she’d come to a stop ahead of him, her front tire sticking out into the street just a little, and perhaps, she had to admit to herself, intentionally, as a test for Russell, she felt the bike go rigid beneath her. When she turned, she saw that Russell had grabbed her seat post. “What?” she said. “Let go.”
; “You were about to …”
“I’m not going out into that,” she said, gesturing at the traffic rushing by and feeling more upset than she wanted to be.
Russell looked down at his hand and let go. “I can’t help myself, can I?” he said, his voice frustrated and angry. He shrugged now, as if he too had given up.
And, of course, he was right. They couldn’t help themselves. He’d continue to irritate her and she’d continue to provoke him. They’d push each other until they had nothing but aggravation between them. And so she’d ride, she told herself now, however the hell she wanted to. At the next intersection, against a red light but with no cars in sight, she sped through, glancing back at Russell’s terrified face so that she didn’t see the car until it struck her. She felt the incredible lightness of her body hurtling forward, the air sucked from her lungs, the impact against the hood, a thud so deep, so allencompassing, thrumming through her thighs, her torso, her ribs, her head, that it seemed to come from inside Evelyn. Her bike was gone, nowhere to be seen. A girl—the driver, perhaps—stood out of the car. “The light was green. The light was green. I didn’t see her,” she was saying. Russell, in his silly helmet, was galloping toward them and yelling, “Help us! Help us!” Evelyn stood up and saw flecks of blood and smudges of road tar on her hands. Her helmet—somehow it had come off—lay in the asphalt gutter. Very slowly she lowered herself back down to the street. People at a sidewalk café abandoned their tables, rushing toward her, and a man in a tank top—the words “Peace Despite Everything!” emblazoned over the chest—spoke loudly on his cell phone. Bending over her now, Russell said, “You’re OK. You’re OK,” and she knew, from the expression on his face, that she couldn’t have been.
Evelyn was in the hallway of a hospital, ceiling tiles and rectangular fluorescent lights in their silver ice-cube trays above her. There was the sound of a child crying somewhere, and she was trying to remember how she’d gotten here and was able to piece together images of a fire truck, an ambulance, a man’s steel-toed boot, a woman with a pie-shaped face and a reassuring smile saying, “How are you, Evelyn? Can you move your fingers for us? Your legs? Good. That’s very good.” And now, in the hallway, a young male doctor asked her to count backwards from twenty and then to recite her home phone number and her address, and in the middle of this recitation Evelyn began to cry, tears taking her over, their force mysterious and irresistible. And then she understood why she was crying. “Russell,” she said. “Where is Russell?” Finally, pale-faced, his eyes frantic, he stood over her and took her hand. His thick hair was smashed and lopsided the way it got after he’d worn his bike helmet. “I’m here,” he said. “Right here.”