Homebodies

by Joan Schweighardt

  Liz never had a cut get infected in her life, but to placate him, she put some iodine on it. “Well,” she said, “it seemed an appropriate action at the time. After all, you’re always telling me to emote.”

  “Emote!” he cried. “Erupt is more like it. You’re a woman of extremes, Liz, a volcano. It frightens me. You go years without crying, without yelling, without being afraid—”

  “I laugh,” she interrupted.

  “Inappropriately. At Jake when he’s being a joker, or at me when I fumble. And then all of a sudden, this!”

  A volcano. She rather liked that. Or at least she likes them—Pete and Jake—treating her as if she is one. The morning after her explosion, they insisted that she spend the day in bed. Jake made her breakfast and brought it up on a tray. Then, before leaving for church and to drive Sherri home, Pete promised that he would take care of dinner and the laundry in the evening, when he and the kids got back. She doesn’t know when she’s had so much attention. And the honest truth is that it felt good to erupt like that. She’s glad it happened. Finally, she got to see what it feels like when the film stops running and you find yourself a player instead of a spectator. Now she thinks she knows what it must be like to be Sherri. She’s a volcano too, and must always be treated with great care—lest she should explode. The difference is that Sherri’s apt to blow at any time, spewing her fury indiscreetly into her environment. Any number of seemingly ordinary incidents can set her off, while Liz’s eruption was an aberration. They have the same genes, the same blood, only Liz’s arrangement is better. How easily it might have gone the other way.

  “Thanks for the thought,” she says, but before she can remind him that the shop is open and that Brigit is due to go down for her nap, he interrupts.

  “Oh, come on, Liz. Call Mrs. Bowker and close the shop for an hour.”

  “It’s pouring rain,” she argues.

  “All the better,” he declares. “No one is likely to stop by on a day like this.”

  “I’m fine, Pete,” she confesses. “You really don’t need to worry about me.” She is touched by his concern, but her desire to appear vulnerable, potentially volatile, is not quite as great as her unwillingness to disrupt her day to go to lunch in the rain. She is working on a crescent-shaped pillow for an elderly man who suffers from a spinal disorder. Brigit is content in her walker, watching the downpour from the window.

  “I’d really like to have lunch with you,” Pete insists.

  “How about Monday,” she offers, “when the shop’s closed anyway.”

  He hesitates. She can tell he is working on a more extravagant enticement and listens with amusement to his silence. “Lobo’s has a new seafood salad platter,” he says at last.

  Liz laughs, but then stops abruptly. There is a determination in his voice, an urgency, that hits her like an aftertaste. All at once it occurs to her that maybe he is the one who is on the verge of an eruption, that maybe after all this time, all this silence, he wants to talk about them, their marriage, his digression, without the kids around. Maybe he has finally come to the point where he needs to come clean about Gladys. Maybe it’s finally over. The signs, now that she thinks about it, have been there of late. He’s been looking at her differently—even before her outburst—watching her carry out the most ordinary tasks as if he were noticing her for the very first time, as if he’s been trying to reach some conclusion about her, about them. “I really want to see you,” he whispers.

  He is waiting outside Lobo’s with his big, black umbrella over his head. He looks small beneath it, a little boy with the face of a forlorn adult. When he sees her pull up to the curb, he rushes toward the car, already extending his umbrella. He looks disappointed when he realizes that she doesn’t need it, that she is wearing her slicker and wide-rimmed rain hat. His lips twitch, and she can see that he is nervous. He holds his umbrella off to one side so that he can take hold of her arm. “We should do this more often,” he says. “No kids … Just the two of us …” She can barely hear him over the plip-plop of the rain.

  Inside, he asks the hostess to seat them at one of the quiet tables in the back. The hostess raises her eyebrows and smiles mischievously while Pete blushes and looks away. Liz can feel a fluttering beginning in the pit of her stomach. Now she is certain he has brought her here to talk about Gladys. It occurs to her that she never even took the time to consider how she should react. The alternatives are limitless. She could play the saint, cover his hand with hers and tell him that she’s known from the start, that she’s only been waiting for it to end so that she could forgive him and they could begin anew. Or, she could feign surprise and indignation. Oh, Pete, how could you do such a thing to me! I just can’t believe this! Or, she could pretend to be on the verge of yet another eruption; there is a part of her that is tempted to make a scene—to bang her fists on the table and sob loudly—for the sole pleasure of observing Pete’s reaction to it.

  She giggles as they slide into their booth. Pete doesn’t notice. He is too busy taking note of the two other couples within earshot. She can imagine his head, darting pigeon-like to each of their tables, trying to determine how much they heard, how much they surmise about his transgression.

  He stares at his menu with unfocused eyes. “I thought you knew what you wanted,” she says.

  He looks up abruptly, as if her statement is an accusation. Then his features relax and he closes the menu and slides it to the end of the table. “So I do,” he says.

  The waitress appears. They both order the seafood salad platter and Chablis. Pete folds his hands on the table and smiles. His smile is a peculiar thing, not very different from his frown. He’s not a grinner. You seldom see his teeth. Still, for all the familiarity of his expression, Liz has the sense that she is having lunch with a stranger. “So, here we are,” she says. “Just the two of us.”

  He nods, his dark brows rising up over the rim of his glasses as if this was the very thing he hoped she’d say. “Isn’t it pleasant? We should do this sort of thing more often. You know, I was just thinking, now that Brigit is getting older …”

  He goes on in this same vein for some time, listing the things that they might do and the places they might go. He seems quite cheerful and Liz begins to wonder how he will ever manage to introduce the subject of his impropriety amid such amiable banter. She wonders if she should try to help him out.

  The waitress brings their drinks and Pete raises his glass. “To us,” he says. “To getting out of the house, to doing more things together.” Their glasses clink. Liz sips. As if he’s in a hurry to return to his animated account of the prospects for their future, Pete gulps. “Museums,” he says, setting his glass down but keeping his fingers wrapped around its stem. “I can’t remember the last time we went to a museum. Do you remember the good time we had when we went to see the Picasso exhibit? When was that? Eighty? Eighty-one?”

  Liz remembers it well. Eighty. Six months after Maddy died. It was their first attempt to leave the bleak privacy of their house together and venture out into public. They’d discussed it for weeks before actually going. She didn’t feel ready, but Pete insisted that she couldn’t be sure that that was the case until she’d tested herself. For his sake, she agreed to take the test.

  It was a beautiful day, coolish. The sky was so bright with color that when you looked up at it, you felt as if you had been swimming underwater all your life and had only just broken through the surface. They sat on a bench eating hot dogs from a curb-vendor and watching an attractive women on another bench converse with the boa constrictor draped around her shoulders. Pigeons assembled at their feet, groveling for crumbs. There were mimes and musicians on the sidewalk. It seemed wherever she looked Liz was confronted with the spectacle of individuals insisting on life. Her senses floated, lifting her far above the recollection of her misfortunes. She began to think she would pass the test without any effort.

  The museum was crowded, so they were forced to move through it slowly, waiting
at each exhibit for the crowd ahead of them to part so that they could step up into the place they had vacated. The waiting and the crowds, however, only added to Picasso’s drama, to his unspeakable inclusiveness. It was as if each painting, each sketch, was concealed by a human curtain. It seemed appropriate to have to wait to see beyond it. But when the human curtain was drawn to reveal the Guernica, all the other exhibits, the crowds, the sky, the day, lost their meaning for Liz. She saw only the woman on the left of the canvas, the one who carries her dead baby in her arms. She saw how the woman’s hands were opened, flexed, as if she were pleading with the forces that be to reverse the moment, offering up her whole life, her every breath, for that one alteration.

  Her anguish stormed through her like a freight train. When it was gone, she was empty, a barren track with only the fluttering of a few leaves to confirm that something had passed through. She could hear Pete chattering beside her. “Now the interesting thing about Picasso,” he was saying, “is that people tend to think of him as a revolutionary, because of the cubism and all that. But you look at something like this, one of his masterpieces, the masterpiece as far as I’m concerned, and you see that he was a traditionalist too in the strongest sense of the word. I mean, the open-mouthed distress on the mourning women. Poussin. Do you see it, Liz? And the head thrown back on the woman with the kid, the agony, the vulnerability in that expanse of neck … Do you see Ingres’s ‘Jupiter and Thetis’ in it? All the expressions here, if you think about it, are very close to the expressions on the masks that the Greek and Roman actors wore when they were acting tragic parts.”

  She remembers becoming aware that her mouth was moving, that she was struggling to say the words that would inform him that the woman was her, that the kid was hers, that the pain was too great, and that her knees were buckling. But nothing of what she tried to verbalize found its way out.

  Pete shook his head at the wonder of his own analysis, and, ever considerate, glanced over his shoulder to see whether they were holding up the crowd. They were and moved on.

  When they left the museum, they walked down to Cooper Union where there was a square dance going on in the courtyard. They sat side by side on the curb and watched the dancers for a long time. Every time Liz glanced at Pete, she saw that he was smiling, feeling, she knew, as she had felt up until they had viewed the Guernica. She couldn’t imagine how he had failed to note the change that had come over her. But later, when they were looking for a restaurant, she understood. She saw a woman staring back at her from the dark glass of a closed shop. She was smiling ever so slightly, her arms at her sides. Her head was high, and she looked, in her long gray skirt and cotton blouse, positively unflappable.

  “So,” she says between sips of Chablis, when she realizes he has finally stopped talking. “How are you doing with your Stekel?”

  He looks puzzled, as if he has no idea what she’s talking about. He had some kind of crazy dream a few days ago and woke up on the floor. He didn’t discuss it with her, but ever since then, instead of watching game shows with the kids at night, he’s been reading Stekel or Freud or someone else on the subject of dreams. He even bought one of those little booklets that they sell at the supermarket. “Oh, that,” he replies. Then he puts his elbow on the table, nestling his chin into his palm. “Do you ever wonder how much our dreams influence our decisions? I mean, of course our vivid dreams influence us, but do you suppose the dreams we don’t remember influence us too? It’s a little scary, isn’t it? I mean, I’d like to think that I’m the author of my decisions.”

  She can see that he’s never going to mention Gladys unless she brings her up first. He’ll let the whole lunch go by, and by the time he gets back to the office, he’ll have changed his mind, just as she did when she decided to put off their initial confrontation until the next morning. “That’s ridiculous, Pete. If it’s your dream, and if you make a decision in it, then you already are the author. It’s not like the dream came from outside you,” she states crossly, forgetting about her own recent dream.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. These things that happen in the subconscious, who knows where they come from. Like the voices Sherri used to hear. Did they come from within? Did she make them up? Or were there really voices, something external?”

  “Well, I don’t know how you can think that’s a possibility and refuse to consider that Isabel—”

  “Please, don’t let’s talk about Isabel. Whenever we talk about that, we wind up—”

  “Well, you brought it up.”

  “No, I only said that … Never mind.”

  They sit in silence for a while, watching the waitresses coming and going from the kitchen. Liz thinks about how if she told him about Maddy, he’d certainly say that she was the author of that. And yet here he’s willing to believe that dreams can get in from elsewhere. Voices too. What a contradiction he is!

  Pete clears his throat. “Oh, by the way,” he says. “I should mention to you that I’ll be away this weekend.” He takes another quick gulp from his glass. “I’m going to an advertising convention … Unless, of course, you already made some other plans for the weekend for us.”

  “An advertising convention?” she repeats. She sits back, out of the candlelight, so that he can’t see the change in her expression. She needn’t have bothered because he is too intent on going on, on getting it all out while he still has the nerve. He is on automatic now, saying words he’s rehearsed. The words themselves are those of a composed man, but the pace at which he delivers them is far too rapid to validate his composure. He’s giving himself away.

  “After all,” he says as if responding to a challenge, “it is my company. Ultimately, I’m the one who’s responsible if this advertising division fails. And now that I’ve sunk so much money into it … There’s a psychology to advertising, a methodology that I don’t really have a handle on yet. So this will give me the chance to tune in, to make myself more knowledgeable. I’d have told you sooner, but we only got the invitation in the mail yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? That seems funny,” she mumbles.

  He’s all ready for her, nodding to let her know how eager he is to respond. “Well, it seems what happened is that they sent the brochure to the wrong address. It was actually mailed some weeks ago, according to the postmark. That’s the postal system for you.”

  With his one hand still gripping his wine glass and the other beginning to make circles in the air, as if to assist him in generating his discourse, he goes on, explaining the things that happen at such conventions, the types of people who speak, the various workshops, the opportunities to make business connections. “Of course Gladys is going too,” she interrupts.

  His hand halts mid-revolution and then begins again. “Well, at this point, it’s uncertain. She’s uncertain, I should say. Of course I told her that I think she should attend.” He shrugs. “After all, she is the one in charge of our ad division. But if she can’t make it, then I suppose I can convey the relevant information to her.”

  “She might not be able to make it? Why not?”

  “Oh, you know, the weekend thing.” He leans forward, as if he is letting her in on a secret. “She works awfully hard, Liz. She likes her weekends. But she may decide to go. She has until tomorrow to decide.”

  “I assume the convention is out of town? That you’ll have to be gone overnight?”

  He holds up a finger on his rotating hand. “Well, that’s up in the air too. It’s in Newark, at the Holiday Inn near the airport, so it’s only a two hour ride. I could drive home Saturday night and drive back again on Sunday, but I’d have to get up awfully early. The first workshop on Sunday begins at eight. I’d have to be up at five. What do you think? Do you think I should come home?”

  “That is awfully early.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s what I thought. And the other thing is that although the last of the Saturday workshops lets out at five, there’s a dinner afterward. Of course, if I were coming home, I�
��d have to skip the dinner. I’d rather have dinner with you and the kids. But, on the other hand, the dinner is when most of the business connections are made. People get talking, business cards are exchanged … that sort of thing. Well, it’s six of one, half-dozen of the other. I’d like to attend the dinner, but if you have something planned for Saturday night …”

  She has to check herself to keep from laughing. Saturday night, Wednesday night—they are all pretty much the same. “This is something you have to decide for yourself,” she says.

  He lifts his chin suddenly and blinks, as if he is unsure exactly what she is referring to.

  Liz cocks her head from side to side. “Whether or not to stay over,” she mumbles.

  Their platters arrive. Pete, who is always polite, is so distracted by his musings that he doesn’t think to thank the waitress until she has already moved off to another table. “Well, I’ll give it some thought,” he says as he watches the waitress for some indication that she heard his belated acknowledgment. He picks up his fork. “If Gladys decides to go, maybe I’ll suggest that she attend the dinner. Of course, it’s my company. I should really be there too.” His speech is slower now. He’s winding down. Maybe he’s gleaned his own transparency. Or maybe, having rehearsed all this, he’s beginning to get bored. He tastes his salad. “Of course,” he adds, “if I stay for the dinner, I can probably find the time afterward to go to the nursing home and visit with your father. That would be nice. I haven’t spent much time with him since he got sick.” He peeks up at Liz, his dark eyes registering a question.